


Mardis Gras

by abundantlyqueer



Series: Mardis Gras Universe [1]
Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-02
Updated: 2004-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-13 01:31:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abundantlyqueer/pseuds/abundantlyqueer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This piece was previously posted under the title "Lagniappe". I've made a few very minor edits.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Voodoo Doll

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was previously posted under the title "Lagniappe". I've made a few very minor edits.

It's after eight in the evening when Orlando's last interview ends, and it takes him a few minutes to realize that _was_ the last one. He's been on this particular treadmill for twelve hours straight and it's hard to believe there's an end to the supply of journalists who want to hear the answers to the same six questions, or the photographers who want to take endless pains to get the same shot of him looking artless.

His cell phone trills even as he switches it back on; he glances at the caller ID and smiles as he flips it open.

"Hey hobbit."

"So what do you think of New Orleans?" Tobey laughs on the other end of the line.

"The little sugar packets for the coffee maker have Mardi Gras masks printed on them; it's nice," Orlando says, turning one of the tiny envelopes over in his fingers.

"Shit. Fuck. Did they even let you outside today man?"

"There's an outside? I'm gonna order up, climb into bed. My flight out's at six and - "

"Oh no, no fucking way are you just writing this off dude. You don't go all the way to New Orleans to see sugar packets. Where do they have you?"

"The Sheraton, I think," Orlando says, consulting the little envelope in his hand again. "Yeah, the Sheraton."

"Okay. Go out the front door; the big street you're on is Canal. Look left; one of the cross streets is Bourbon. Do it."

Orlando thinks about it.

"Don't think about it," Tobey says. "I'm the ring-bearer, and I'm telling you to fucking do it."

Cut.

Orlando's been wearing a sweater against the Sheraton's aggressive air-conditioning, but he remembers the exhalation of heat and moisture that met him between the airport terminal and the limousine at seven this morning. He trades his sweater for a cotton shirt and stows his wallet in his jeans pocket.

The junction of Canal Street and Bourbon is flanked by the same chain stores he's seen in a dozen other American cities in the last month. The skin of cool dry air from the Sheraton's lobby lasts long enough for him to lope across four lanes of light nighttime traffic. After that, he's breathing the silky clinging air of the Quarter.

He takes the turn at the top of Bourbon Street and passes the glass and brass frontage of plush restaurants. There's a chalkboard on the sidewalk advertising the price of crawfish, and a guy playing trumpet, and enough people on the street to make Thursday night feel like the weekend.

He crosses an intersection and the guy on the trumpet's lost in the spill of music from a blues bar. He dodges a bar bouncer holding up 'no cover charge' sign, and almost walks into a girl selling multi-colored shots from a test tube rack.

He apologizes and sidesteps, then crosses the next intersection. The dark caverns of open-fronted bars alternate with brightly lit bead stores. A hard-rock band on one side of the street counter-currents with a hip-hop track on the other, and the resulting cacophony is overlaid by the whoop and yell of passers-by. A girl in an antebellum hoop-skirt touts business for a topless bar, and the tanned and buffed bouncer of a gay bar looks at Orlando with enough significance to make him duck and blush and finger his curls down onto his forehead.

He crosses another intersection, another slight respite from sound and color where three cabs and one stop sign create a fixture around which the pedestrians flow unconcerned. The sidewalk's reflecting the blue red green pulse of overhead neon; he looks up, and realizes there's another party strung out along the iron balconies on either side of the street.

He pulls up short, blocked by a tall dark body. An ebony-skinned man in a trilby and a black zoot-suit unbuttoned over his bare chest gives him a glittering grin. Orlando laughs and dodges and keeps walking. He hasn't had a drink for days, but there's enough alcohol transpiring off human skin and human breath and the fucking _air_ here to make him feel like anything that happens is not his fault.

He skirts a crowd gathered in the middle of the street imploring beads from the revelers on the balcony overhead. There's a shower of gold and purple and green, and he gets caught in the surge forward and then finds himself adrift in the middle of a circle of spectators when the sidewalks have been picked clean.

"Hey, you, the cute guy," a couple of girls shout and Orlando, attracted by the noise, makes the mistake of lifting his face.

There's a scattered rain of beads around his feet. He laughs again, lifting one hand to half-hide his embarrassment.

"No, come on, the shirt, the shirt," they call, pantomiming parting the two sides of a garment.

He shakes his head, but more of the partiers on the balcony notice him and start crowing and clapping. Even some of the bystanders on the street are taking up the call. He can feel the blush burning in his face, but it's exactly the kind of shit he and the hobbits used to get up to in New Zealand. Tobey will love the story when Orlando tells him.

Orlando laughs and starts fingering open the buttons of his shirt. There's a swell of applause; he grins up at his audience and shrugs his shirt off his shoulders, letting it hang around his wrists and hips for a long beat before hitching it back up.

Strings of beads loop through the air, falling like bright hail on the sidewalk. Scavengers pick up the ones that fall too far from him, but he takes rightful possession of the dozen or so strands that land within ten feet of him. He hangs most of them around his neck, and wraps another two or three around each wrist under his open shirt cuffs. The revelers on the balcony start calling for him to come up and join them, but he shrugs and smiles and starts towards the next cross-street.

The building on the corner, in contrast to the large, brightly-lit club and store-fronts on either side, is a high narrow apartment house in almost complete darkness. A softly lit doorway on the second floor shows a single figure on the iron balcony, leaning over the railing with a strand of golden beads hanging from his hand.

At first Orlando, still dazzled by brighter lights, can't make out more than a small slender frame clad in black, the suggestion of pale skin, and a head of dark spiky hair.

"Hey you, cute guy," Elijah says in teasing mimicry of the girls on the previous balcony.

Orlando slows and steps aside out of the passing stream of people so that he can gaze up undisturbed. His eyes, adjusting to less light, take a more detailed survey of Elijah's leather jeans and sheer shirt. Elijah sets the beads in his hand swinging temptingly.

"Throw them down," Orlando says, shivering pleasurably at the shift and sway of the strands already against his skin beneath his open shirt.

"Come up and get them," Elijah counters. "A hundred bucks and you can come up for an hour."

Orlando's smile slides and shatters; this is decidedly _not_ the kind of story he's going to tell Tobey, but the way Orlando's heart is jittering in his chest suggests he's already made his decision. He doesn't answer Elijah, but turns the corner off Bourbon Street onto Saint Louis and walks along the shuttered frontage.

The only access from the street is an ironwork gate that pushes open under his hand. He passes through a narrow arched passageway and into a small overgrown courtyard. Strings of party lights twinkle among the leaves and the large, improbably-perfect flowers. The air is thickly sweet, warm and moist as a kiss.

He's suddenly irritatingly aware of the angles of the plastic beads around his neck and wrists. When he glances at them, their garish shine seems ridiculously out of place. Quickly he lifts them off over his head and unwinds them from his hands, and leaves them in a glittering pile on the brick edge of the courtyard fountain.

An open doorway gives onto a narrow stairway leading up into the interior of the house. He goes up, half-feeling his way in the dark with his palm sliding along the peeling painted walls. He comes out on a narrow walkway overlooking the courtyard. Another doorway stands half-open in invitation, and through the gap he sees glimpses of gold and glass suffused with soft light.

He moves forward, his heart beating thickly in his chest and his skin prickling against the soft cotton of his shirt. He steps across the threshold into humming air-conditioned coolness. The small room is encrusted with gilt and mirrors, and hung with velvet. There's a day bed draped in satin and piled with pillows, and he shivers in ready anticipation of the fabric's cold touch on his naked skin.

There's another room though, half-screened by a pair of high paneled pocket doors, in which he can see a real bed covered in red and gold brocade and another drift of pillows. In the far corner is a narrow door that he realizes must give out onto the street-side balcony, though the noise from the street is quite muffled up here. He moves that way.

"I'm here," Elijah says softly and Orlando twists round to see Elijah standing at the foot of bed, hidden from the outer room by the half-closed doors.

For a second Orlando can only think that Tobey better never find out that he's a pale imitation of someone else, then all thoughts of comparison disappear. Elijah moves towards Orlando and Orlando's mouth goes dry and his heart bangs at his breastbone. Elijah's hair and eyebrows and eyelashes are bitter chocolate dark; his skin is milky pale, and the low light turns the dark downy hair on his jaw to gold. He's slender and small enough to make Orlando's palms ache to hold him, but there's the cut of sleek muscle too, and the crotch of Elijah's leather jeans is stretched taut in a way that makes Orlando feel anything but protective.

"What am I allowed do?" Orlando says in a rush as Elijah moves in.

"Whatever you want," Elijah answers, and Orlando's heart and stomach flip over at his first glimpse of Elijah's gap-toothed smile.

"Can we fuck?" Orlando asks, feeling like an ass for not knowing.

"Of course."

Orlando lets the red hot shock wave of that pass over his skin and die out in his fingertips. He lifts his hand, his touch whispering over the transparent black gauze covering Elijah's nipple. Elijah hisses, his lips curling back from his teeth. Something that may not be Orlando's heart starts shaking inside his chest.

"Can we - " he knows he's stupid to ask, there are some things you don't try to buy but the desire's already there and it won't stay silent now, "Can we kiss?"

Elijah blinks slowly, and there's a moment of slithering fear when Orlando realizes this isn't safe isn't sane but Orlando's been in love with that feeling all his life. He leans down, closing his eyes against the drowning blue of Elijah's stare, and puts his lips to Elijah's mouth.

There's heat and softness and a split like ripe fruit under his teeth and Elijah tastes sweeter than burnt sugar. Orlando blushes because someone's just whimpered pathetically and he's fairly sure it was him. Elijah's tongue stabs smoothly into Orlando's mouth, and Orlando catches hold of Elijah by the shoulders to hold himself up, because it would be pretty fucking embarrassing to just fold quite this soon.

Orlando can't even tell if he's hard; all he knows is that he's coming apart in warmth and want, and he can't hear Bourbon Street over the pounding of his own pulse in his ears. Elijah's hands are sure and steady on the buttons of Orlando's denims, and every pull and nudge sends another liquid quiver through Orlando's body.

"Christ, yes, please," he says desperately against Elijah's curving lips.

"It's been a while hasn't it?" Elijah says, and Orlando bites his own lip because, yes, it's been months since he's been with anyone at all and he thinks that maybe it's been forever since he's felt quite like this.

"It's okay, hush baby," Elijah soothes, palming the skin of Orlando's belly and hips. "I'll help you."

Elijah strips Orlando's jeans and boxers down to mid-thigh. Orlando's cock sways free, already rigid. The touch of the air is enough to make his thighs spasm. Elijah backs him against the bed. Orlando sits, then reclines. The shift of weight in his groin is pleasurable enough to make him arch his spine and groan. Elijah reaches into the open nightstand drawer and retrieves a length of black silk cord.

"What are you doing?" Orlando asks, as Elijah forms the cord into a loop around his own outstretched fingers.

"You're paying for an hour," Elijah says, kneeling over him. "I want you to get your money's worth."

"Oh Christ," Orlando gasps as understanding dawns. It's half fear, half fierce arousal, and wholly dread that if Elijah touches him at all he's going to come.

"Don't watch," Elijah says. "Look at me. Look at my face."

Orlando's gaze snaps up to Elijah's eyes, though there's precious little reassurance to be found there, just a gleam of blue under lowered black lashes.

"What's your name?" Elijah asks by way of distraction.

"Orlando," Orlando says sharply, twitching at the whisper of the cord's loose ends against his inner thigh.

"How do you pay the bills Orlando?"

"I'm – I'm an actor," Orlando stutters as Elijah's fingers close warm and firm around the shaft of his cock.

Elijah slips the noose around the root of Orlando's cock and both balls and draws it tight. Something dark red behind Orlando's eyes explodes into white stars.

"Shit fuck that's not helping."

"Oh I think it is," Elijah says, tying off the ends of the cord.

Orlando pants out the next few seconds of his panic, while the quiver in his belly subsides into a dull hum. The pressure and restriction around his cock and balls is like a physical weight pinning him down onto the bed. The bite-line of the cord remains in sharp focus, but thicker blurrier sensations pool in his groin and then spread outwards, down his thighs and up into the pit of his stomach.

"Let's give this a test drive, see if it's tight enough," Elijah says mildly.

He shifts on his hands and knees over Orlando and bends his head. Orlando tenses; Elijah licks a cool wet stripe up the inside of Orlando's thigh from the rucked folds of his denims to the twitching skin of his balls.

"Oh Christ," Orlando whispers, heat flickering in his flesh.

Elijah drags his tongue along the crease of Orlando's groin. Orlando jerks upwards greedily. Elijah lifts his head and gives Orlando a long slow smile. He licks his lips deliberately. Orlando exhales hard through his nostrils, his teeth clenched tightly together. Elijah bends again.

"Sweet sweet fucking Jesus yes," Orlando says, his whole body arching off the bed as Elijah's mouth engulfs the head of his cock.

Elijah's mouth feels red hot and excruciatingly soft, cut with the pearl glint of teeth-edges. The sensation ripples along Orlando's nerves, twisting the screw tighter and tighter inside. Elijah pulls back, and the kiss of the cool air on wet skin is almost more than Orlando can bear. Elijah licks at him, slow kitten tongue rasps that make Orlando shudder and squirm. Through it all, though, the pressure of the cord muffles the sharp edges of sensation, turning everything to a smooth rolling heat that gathers and gathers weight until Orlando half-expects to hear his pelvis crack.

Elijah dips his head again, sliding his mouth over Orlando's cock, swallowing him down until Orlando can feel the delicate billow of Elijah's throat working around him. Orlando reaches back and grips two fistfuls of the pillow behind his head, trying to subdue the urge to thrust himself even deeper. Elijah lifts and dips again, then again, each stroke unraveling heat and wetness along Orlando's shaft. Orlando moans, a broken animal sound that would have him blushing self-consciously if he weren't so far beyond shame now.

"Slow down," Orlando sobs. "Slow down or I'll - "

"No you won't," Elijah pulls back just long enough to pant. "You're not gonna be able to."

Elijah plunges back down, sucking hard, his fingers sliding on the spit-slick skin of Orlando's shaft. Orlando writhes, head thrown back and teeth bare in a snarl of agonized pleasure. He knows the red-black quiver deep in his guts and the white-hot tension singing along the tendons of his thighs; he knows it's almost over. He presses himself back into the bedclothes, trying to hold on for just a little longer. His heart is trip-hammering inside his chest and he's not breathing. He squeezes his eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable crumble of the cliff beneath his feet.

It doesn't come. _He_ doesn't come. He's gasping for air, struggling up onto his elbows to watch Elijah's head bob up and down, the line of Elijah's shoulders and back curving and bending.

"Oh fucking hell," Orlando cries, as the heat and pressure in his groin unwinds in scorching tendrils along his spine and down his legs and into his ass.

Elijah, without breaking rhythm, looks up at Orlando from under his eyelashes. Orlando loses the lock on his elbows and falls back among the pillows, begging for mercy.

"Christ please stop don't I can't fucking come please - "

Elijah slows, softens his mouth, stops. Orlando, gasping for breath, manages a weak sound of gratitude.

"Seems tight enough," Elijah says mildly.

Orlando gives a shaky laugh. Elijah reaches into the nightstand again and extracts a silver-lidded glass jar of smoky dark oil. He unlids the jar, dips his fingers, and sets the jar aside.

"Do I even want to know what that is?" Orlando asks, only half-joking.

"A friend cooks it up for me," Elijah says, stroking his hands against each other. "You'll like it."

He smoothes both palms up the insides of Orlando's thighs. Orlando feels a sparkling heat spring to life on the skin.

"Oh you're not fucking serious," he groans, his spine bowing upwards into a slow but sustained arch.

Elijah's fingers and thumbs follow the creases of Orlando's groin, then trail back up over the creeping skin of his balls. Orlando exhales hard up as he feels the tingling heat spreading.

"Oh fuck that feels good."

Elijah dips his fingers again. He traces the crease of Orlando's ass back from balls to opening, and when Orlando gasps and shifts, Elijah presses one finger into the pouting hole. Orlando snaps out a breath, wide-eyed, and clutches at Elijah's arm. Elijah crooks his finger and Orlando hisses. Elijah withdraws. The prickle of heat builds in Orlando's thighs and balls and ass.

Elijah's hands sweep up both sides of Orlando's ribcage and over his nipples. Orlando jerks hard.

"Oh Christ I'm fucking burning," he says, glaring at Elijah.

Elijah moves back, slithering off the bed. He opens the front of his leather jeans and peels the thin hide off his hips and down his thighs. He's naked underneath, and Orlando's body manages to produce a fresh jolt of arousal at the sight of his thick cock jutting stiffly out of a tangle of black curls. Elijah steps out of the shed skin of his jeans and crawls back onto the bed, straddling Orlando's thighs.

Orlando reaches up under the transparent hem of Elijah's shirt and thumbs at the cross-hatching of black ink engraved into the skin above Elijah's right hip.

"Nice," he breathes.

Elijah leans over and dips his fingers in the oil one more time. Orlando tenses, sinking his teeth into his own lower lip as Elijah slowly palms the shaft of Orlando's cock. As the oil takes effect, Orlando lets go a long shuddering breath. Elijah presses his thumbs into the open palms of Orlando's hands; Orlando cries out and writhes in ecstasy.

Elijah kneels over him and takes hold of Orlando's cock. He guides it to the opening of his body.

"Oh Jesus fucking Christ yes," Orlando sobs, and Elijah sinks down in a smooth fluid rush that makes Orlando throw his head back and howl.

Elijah starts to move, a slow up and down at first. Orlando gathers himself and whatever small shreds of control he has left. He takes hold of Elijah's hips and tugs, introducing a forward and back nuance to the motion.

"That's good," Elijah says breathlessly. "You're good. You're a good fuck, Orlando."

Orlando smiles, a little prideful maybe, and just glad that Elijah's liking it too. Orlando bends his legs and sets his feet flat on the bed, giving himself some leverage to thrust up into Elijah.

Elijah rocks back against him, their bodies meeting with deliciously rough jolts at each stroke.

"Oh yeah that's good," Elijah pants, his head tipping back to expose his pale throat. "Fuck me."

Orlando's forgotten where he is, who he is, what this transaction's about. All he knows is that he's half-naked on a bed with a beautiful beautiful young guy who's letting Orlando fuck him hard and deep and long.

It's the rhythm that undoes him, the sharp repeated jerk of his hips and the surge of sensation that follows. Each thrust feels so good he can't help hurrying to the next, quicker and quicker. Elijah curses quietly, his body rocked by the force of the movement, and he tips forward onto his hands and knees incapable of doing more than just accepting Orlando.

Orlando hitches his hips higher and pumps faster.

"I'm gonna fucking come I'm gonna fucking come," he pants, except it isn't true even though his body is quivering with the soft white-flame of it running along his nerves and the pit of his guts full to brimming with red heat and his balls drawn up tight against his body and aching aching from it.

The cord is a hoop of stone and fire around him.

Elijah's fingers are slippery on Orlando's hip and then his groin. Orlando thrusts into Elijah's body and Elijah captures the slip-end of the cord and jerks and Orlando yells in triumph and pain and delight and he's coming in waves of red fire and golden sparks and the dark is coming up at him velvet soft and very

"Orlando."

Orlando pushes at the black, though it's heavy and sweet and quite comfortable. He opens his eyes. Elijah smiles.

Orlando hoists one hand up out the crumpled sheets to trace the fleshy curl of Elijah's top lip.

"That was … " Orlando breathes.

"An hour. Exactly," Elijah grins.

Cut.

The next day Orlando calls Tobey to tell him about Orlando's shucking his shirt for beads on Bourbon Street. Tobey says he'll want to see the beads as proof, but of course Orlando doesn't have them. They're still on the rim of the fountain in the courtyard of the house on the corner of Saint Louis.

Orlando doesn't tell Tobey about Elijah. Orlando doesn't tell anyone, not even Stuart who's sort of Orlando's mentor even though he's only a couple of years older. He has a kind of authority and wisdom though; Orlando likes to think it's from playing Aragorn for eighteen months straight.

Even by the next night, in another city where the sugar packets bear only the hotel name and the manufacturer's brand, Orlando wonders if New Orleans happened at all. After a couple more cities, he's quite sure it didn't.


	2. Witch King

It's five days later when Elijah sits at a table under the awning of the Café du Monde, watching the pigeons pecking at the bomb-tracks of powdered sugar on the sidewalk, and the tourists cringe under the attentions of a busking trumpeter whose primary talent seems to be the ability to sustain a note to the point of fucking irritation. When the waitress brings his order – a super-size café au lait in a Styrofoam cup and an order of beignets wrapped to go – he pays her, slips his shades on, gathers up his purchases and the newspaper the previous customer abandoned on the table, and leaves.

It's not much after noon, and the sun's beating mercilessly down into the narrow streets. The French Quarter's still lazily uncoiling itself into the business day, shop owners finally getting around to unshuttering their windows and setting out their bargain rails. Elijah exchanges smiles of greeting with some of the kids idling on the steps of the head shops.

He walks on, into a quieter residential neighborhood. Through barred doorways he catches glimpses of shaded passageways and cool courtyards, tempting by contrast with the heat and glare of the streets. Finally he pushes through a peeling painted street-door into a dark carriageway, and out into a small garden at the center of a tall apartment building. He takes off his shades and tucks them into his hip pocket as he goes up the exterior stairs, then along a hallway and up more stairs, and on up until he's climbing the narrow wooden stairway to the apartment tucked under the eaves.

He transfers the coffee container carefully to the same hand that's holding the beignet bag and knocks on the door, but neither expects nor receives an answer. He crouches down, toeing the corner of the grimy carpeting aside and picking up the key lying underneath, and unlocks the door. He replaces the key, redistributes his burdens, hips the door open some more, and goes in, nudging the door closed again with his knee.

There's another flight of stairs up into the apartment proper.

It's gloomy inside, what windows there are being small and almost entirely obstructed by the various feathered and bony and ragged jee-jaws hanging in front of them. Festoons of dried plant material and painted gourds and mummified birds hang so thickly from the rafters that even diminutive Elijah has to duck and dodge as he makes his way across to the table.

There's a cloying sweetness to the air, like the scent of spices, with a sourer metallic undertone like the smell of rotting meat. A fly's buzzing frantically somewhere, beating its small body against the smeared glass of a window-pane.

Elijah uses his forearm to push aside enough of the clutter of paint tubes and caked brushes and bits of torn fabric and tangled hair and snipped tin cans to make space for the coffee and pastries on the table corner. He puts them down, tosses the newspaper on top, and goes on over to the curtained doorway on the far side of the room.

He ducks through, into a space even more densely ornamented than the last. More paints and materials cover every surface, along with canvases half-coated in color and cloth and hair, masks startling in their realism, plaster statues of catholic saints with their faces and clothes garishly repainted and decorated with everything from chicken bones to watch parts. The walls are a jumble of fetish dolls and skulls and photographs and finished canvases and pages torn from gallery catalogs describing the very articles surrounding them. The smell of sour beer and old blood is thick in the air.

Elijah steps around one of the tables cluttering the room, and looks down at the low narrow cot bed behind it.

Viggo, completely naked except for a bit of tattered black rag tied around his right ankle, is lying tangled in sheets that at some distant point in the past were white but have now aged to a grayish yellow, heavily spotted and stained with the traces of old paint and semen and sin. Among the folds of the worn cotton, in the creases of Viggo's sallow skin, and between the long lank strands of Viggo's brown hair are caught dozens of smoothly curling black feathers.

Viggo's eyes are half-open, gleaming in the shadows of the dim room, his eyelids absolutely motionless, his chest rising and falling very slowly and smoothly.

"Viggo?" Elijah whispers.

No response.

"Viggo," a little louder this time.

Still nothing. Elijah realizes Viggo's out cold.

"Viggo!"

"Nnnungh!" Viggo yells, his long lean body arching up off the thin mattress briefly, then collapsing back as his head rolls to one side and his eyes drop shut.

Elijah starts laughing.

"Viggo!" he shouts, booting the bed leg for added emphasis. "Wake up!"

"Ah fuckin' fuck, fuck," Viggo rasps, kicking weakly at the sheets twisted around his shins.

He struggles his eyes open and squints at Elijah.

"Kid, fuck off outta here before I put your fuckin' insides on your outsides."

"Dude, you are fucked up," Elijah grins. "What the fuck were you doing?"

Viggo, hawking and hacking, manages to haul himself up onto his elbow.

"Same thing I do every Friday night," he says. "Letting the loa ram me up the fuckin' ass. What day is it, anyway?"

"Tuesday."

"Fuck," Viggo snorts in amusement.

"I brought coffee, I'll get it," Elijah says.

While he's gone, Viggo makes it as far as sitting on the edge of the cot, picking feathers out of his pubes and crusted tears out of the corners of his eyes.

"Here," Elijah says, offering him the mug that Elijah's filled from the takeout cup, along with a single beignet.

"Ah, thanks, yeah," Viggo says. "Caffeine an' sugar … that's what it fuckin' takes to keep you tied to this fuckin' plane of existence. They can't fuck with you if you're sugared up."

"Oh yeah, by the way, Ceciline said to say hi, and that you're a mother-fucking bastard, and when she asked you to make sure Daniel didn't run off on her, she didn't mean for him to end up with two broken legs."

Viggo splutters coffee onto his bare chest and wipes ineffectively at himself with the side of his hand.

"Fuck. If the fuckin' cunt can't think of anything more interesting to ask for than her sister's husband, she's gotta expect me to get bored and fuck things up a bit."

"Yeah, talking of which, I want you to do a little something for me," Elijah says.

Viggo's smile twists a little.

"Yeah? What's caught your eye, belle Elijah?"

"A man."

"A man. You don't fuckin' need me for this, Elijah, you've already got that power. They can't fuckin' say no to you," Viggo says, setting his coffee down and feeling around on the floor for his cigarettes.

"This man," Elijah says, flipping out the newspaper he's holding to show Viggo the small photograph tucked low in the corner of the page.

"British actor Orlando Bloom and his Lord of the Rings costars Stuart Townsend and Tobey Maguire … Elijah, it's a newspaper, not a fuckin' catalog," Viggo complains.

"I've already had him, he was here, on Thursday night. I just want you to make him come back again. I didn't even know who he was, for Christ's sake."

"Don't use that kinda fuckin' language in my house," Viggo coughs. "Where the fuck are my fuckin' smokes?"

"They're right here," Elijah says impatiently, reaching the packet and a purple plastic lighter from among the mess at his elbow.

"Oh, okay. What have you got left from him?" Viggo asks, tapping out a cigarette and lighting up.

"Not much. The shirt I wore that night – the john before him was an ass, I had to change, and Orlando was my last trick of the night so he was the only customer I had wearing the new one. And a bunch of Mardi Gras beads he was wearing for a couple of minutes."

"You fuck Dom after you were done working?" Viggo asks around his cigarette.

"Yeah, but I took my clothes off before we'd done much. I wasn't wearing the shirt when he came."

Viggo lifts his eyebrows, considering.

"Like you say, it's not fuckin' much. And this guy … Orlando … he's got like a million people thinking about him every second of the fuckin' day. You know what that's like Elijah? It's a million little threads, holding him in place, holding him where he's supposed to be. For me to bring him back here, I gotta pull harder than all those little threads."

"It's okay, I know it's a lot to ask. If you can't do it - "

"I never fuckin' said I couldn't do it. Don't fuckin' start with me. I can do it. You want him back? I'll fuckin' get him back for you."

Elijah smiles, a slow burn curl of his lips.

"Fuckin' whore," Viggo says fondly. "So what do I get in return?"

"What do you ever get? I fucking feed you man, see you don't starve yourself to death, make sure you haven't choked on your own puke, fuck, who cleans up the dead fucking chickens around here? And, oh yeah, I'll let you do that weird fucking shit with me that gets you off so much."

"Yeah?" Viggo leers. "It's been a while, belle Elijah."

"Yeah, well it's been a while since I needed you to do me a favor."

Viggo stands, groaning.

"Take your clothes off," he says as he slouches out of the room. "I'll get the stuff."

"You wanna do it _now_?" Elijah calls after him, though he's already peeling his tee shirt off over his head.

"Bon sure," Viggo says, coming back into the room with an unlabeled dark glass spirits bottle. "The loa have been sucking me dry for three fuckin' days. I could use a little juice to get me jump-started again."

Elijah shakes his head ruefully, heeling his boots off and unbuttoning the fly of his denims.

"Here, drink some of this," Viggo says, shoving the bottle into the mess on the table next to Elijah.

"That stuff makes me piss black for days, you know that, right?" Elijah calls after Viggo as Viggo goes back out again.

Elijah pulls his denims off and shakes them out, then tosses them under the table with his tee-shirt. He takes up the bottle and uncorks it, swilling the contents round a bit before lifting it to his lips. He swallows, makes a face, and swallows some more.

Viggo comes back, humming under his breath and fiddling with a small chunk of something greasy and black between his fingers.

"Come here."

Elijah turns obediently, and Viggo smears some of whatever it is he's got between Elijah's eyebrows.

"Hands."

Elijah puts the bottle down and offers his palms for marking too.

"Drink some more."

Viggo rummages around on the table, his humming resolving itself into a monotone murmur of words. Elijah takes two more swigs from the bottle and then recorks it.

"Here we are," Viggo says, untangling a stiff leather thong from the mess.

He loops it around Elijah's throat, tying it just tightly enough that Elijah instinctively lifts his hand to it, his fingers brushing the fragment of yellowed and broken bone pressing into his Adam's apple.

"Lose the underwear," Viggo says.

Elijah skims his boxers down and off, leaving himself naked except for Viggo's adornments.

"Pretty," Viggo murmurs, considering the pale smooth line of Elijah's hip and his black pubic curls and the way his cock hangs soft and heavy between his legs. "You know, if I put the right mask on you, I could suck five years of your fucking life out of your body."

"Why don't you?" Elijah frowns, stepping back against the cot as Viggo comes closer.

"Can never bring myself to cover up this face," Viggo says, sliding his long hard fingers around Elijah's velvety soft cheek and thumbing the corner of Elijah's mouth.

"Fuck, dude, you smell like a goat," Elijah says.

Viggo laughs rustily.

"Lie down."

Elijah makes a half-hearted attempt to shake the debris of feathers and powdered sugar off the bottom sheet, smoothes it a little, and lies down on his back. He bends his legs, drawing his feet up under him with his knees spread apart. Viggo's fumbling about among the stuff on the window-sill, muttering and humming and occasionally giving soft voice to a few sung syllables. Eventually he finds what he's looking for and comes back to the cot, carrying a small earthenware pot.

He kneels at the foot of the mattress, between Elijah's feet, and unlids the container in his hand. He dips his fingers, and wipes them across the inked pattern on Elijah's right hip. The oil is dark yellow and faintly gritty with fine orange particles. Viggo repeats the anointing of the pattern on his own shoulder.

Elijah's smiling slyly, fingers idling in the crease of his groin. His cock stirs against his belly.

"Is it just me or did it suddenly get really fucking hot in here?" he asks, his voice oddly roughened.

"It's the jungle juice," Viggo grins, glancing at the bottle on the table. "Come on, petit, show me your magic."

Elijah arches up, laughing, and runs his palm up the smooth skin of his stomach and chest, up his throat, past the bone talisman and over his chin, his laughter smearing away into a breathless groan as he does so.

Viggo shifts over him on hands and knees, his expression turning narrow and hungry, watching Elijah's fingertips with predatory fascination.

Elijah rubs his fingers over his own lips, his eyelids flickering at the heat and pressure of the contact. He flicks his tongue-tip out, tasting sugar and salt and something sour on his skin, and the intensity of the taste makes him flex, pushing his toes down into the hard mattress beneath him.

Viggo's humming again, making a weirdly arrhythmic, atonal sound that stirs something deep inside Elijah. Elijah opens his mouth and pushes his fingers inside. The wet softness of his tongue on his fingers slashes sweetly across the dry roughness of his fingers on his tongue. Elijah closes his lips around his knuckles and sucks gently.

"They fuckin' love you, you know that, right," Viggo mumbles, and his enunciation is so blurred it takes Elijah a long second to extract the meaning from the words.

"Who?" he gasps, dragging his wet fingers around the margin of his lips.

"The loa," Viggo says, dipping his chin and baring his teeth, snapping the air just above Elijah's fingertips.

Elijah puts his fingers back into his mouth, sucking more firmly. The pull of pressure in his throat makes him arch again, and the pounding of his blood in his fingertips makes his cock pulse in sympathy.

"I can buy all the power I want, Elijah," Viggo says, his hand hovering in the air above Elijah's throat, fingers splayed wide as if to describe the curve of Elijah's windpipe. "But there's a price, and they take it out of my fuckin' hide. But you … you don't ask for it, you don't fuckin' care if they give it to you or not … and it flows through you like fuckin' water."

Elijah's free hand scoops down into his own groin, cupping and squeezing his balls. His cock lifts, hard and flushed now.

"You know what they like best about you?" Viggo goes on, shifting back onto his knees, head down as he inhales the air above Elijah's cock. "Everything you could get with the power you have … and all you do is fuck guys for a hundred bucks a pop. Fuckin' beautiful. You just fuckin' piss it away."

Elijah groans harshly, pulling his fingers out of his mouth and reaching between his legs, behind his balls, wriggling his fingertips into the crease of his ass.

"Oh, less talking, more fucking now," he pants.

"You know I can't even fuckin' touch you," Viggo says, sinking down on his elbow between Elijah's thighs.

Viggo purses his lips and blows a stream of cool air against Elijah's hole. Elijah jerks, and Viggo hisses in pleasure at the sight of Elijah's spit-softened fingertips pushing into the dusky opening.

"I wish you could," Elijah says hoarsely. "I wish you could take your cock and push it up me and fuck me hard."

Viggo laughs, a low gravelly sound deep in his throat.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you? Wring the last few fuckin' drops of life out me, take instead of giving."

Elijah laughs too, breathless and shaky.

Viggo reaches for the pot of oil again, dipping his fingers and then dabbling them in the air above Elijah. Elijah inhales sharply as the heavy warm droplets fall on his belly and hips and cock. He gives up on the inadequate penetration he can get with his own fingers in this position, his hand trailing up from the crease of his ass, alongside his balls, up the line of his groin to his flat stomach.

He rubs his palm across his faintly clammy skin, smearing the golden drops of oil into gleaming streaks. Viggo spatters another soft rain into the hollow beneath Elijah's breastbone and onto the planes of his chest. Elijah's hand circles higher, around the rising and falling blade-edge of his ribcage and around the tight dark peaks of his nipples.

The scent of the oil strengthens as it heats on Elijah's body, a clinging cloying smell like rotting flowers. Viggo's nostrils flare as he pulls it deep into his lungs, his eyes widening as he feels its warmth tingling in the back of his throat.

Elijah's twisting on the dirty sheets, arching up into the press and pinch of his fingers on his own nipples, his breath coming quick and irregular. Viggo shifts forwards again, supporting himself on his hands and knees so that he's hovering above Elijah.

"Ah … fuck," Elijah moans, the stubby fingernails of both hands scoring red tracks up the shining skin of his sides.

"That's it, that's good," Viggo mutters, his own spine rounding up as Elijah arches his hips and belly off the bed.

"I want … I fucking want … " Elijah says, his eyelids fluttering feverishly.

His hand skims down his body, fingers dipping into the damp curls around the root of his cock, then curling around the thickness of his shaft. Elijah gasps as if in surprised pleasure, and Viggo grins. He's been there himself, deep in the coils of the drugs and the magic, overwhelmed by the disjointed sensations of his own hands on his flesh, his own flesh under his hands.

Elijah pushes his ass up off the bed, narrow haunches hollowing with tension, and his cock slides between his fingers.

"Oh … fuck … please … "

He keeps thrusting up like that, the cot squeaking and creaking under him, his head thrown back and his mouth smeared softly open in a grimace of painful pleasure. Viggo feels the flame-flicker of the otherworld on his own skin, ghost fingers touching and teasing. He hums.

Elijah's hand circles on the head of his own cock and he cries out, sharp and shocked, and then bares his teeth in a wicked grin. The slender curve of his biceps jumps under the skin as he begins to pump his fist up and down on his cock. Viggo's humming becomes a growl, and a shudder runs up his spine.

Elijah's body gleams with a streaked mixture of yellowed oil and clear sweat, droplets coalescing in the hollow of his breastbone and around his hairline. He's deathly pale except for the fever flush high on his cheekbones and the deep red of his mouth. Viggo's voice drops another tone, becoming almost inhuman in the grinding sound coming from his barely parted lips.

Elijah thrashes, his heel slipping on the sheet then digging in again as he fights for enough traction to thrust his hips up into his rapidly pumping hand.

"Oh – fuck – more – give me more," he snaps, and Viggo's eyes flare wide and wild at the inferno of energy pouring off Elijah's skin, out of his open mouth, from the tips of his blunt fingers. Viggo jerks back, resisting the urge to throw himself down on Elijah's small body and just ram himself inside.

Elijah's flushed pink across his collarbones, a sure sign of his impending orgasm. Viggo grabs hold of him around the throat, pressing hard enough to dig the bone talisman into his palm. Elijah's eyes rip open, one hand scrabbling frantically at Viggo's grip on him, but the other still on his cock, still moving, if unevenly.

"Now," Viggo snarls. "Now!"

Elijah convulses. Viggo drops his head, engulfing the head of Elijah's cock where it emerges from Elijah's fist. Elijah tries to scream but there's no space for the sound to escape past Viggo's hold on his throat, so Viggo feels it as a vibration under his hand rather than hearing it. Elijah comes, the seed spurting sour and thick into Viggo's mouth, the red trails of energy unwinding like whip-snaps down Viggo's veins and into his eyes and ears and tongue. Elijah jerks again, and Viggo swallows down red coals and they settle in his stomach and the fire spreads through him.

Viggo lets go of Elijah's throat. Elijah arches, sobbing a huge inhalation of air into his lungs. He's shuddering from head to foot, his cock still spewing weak little pulses of come inside Viggo's mouth. Viggo draws back slowly, careful to take every last trace of semen first.

Elijah shivers, his head falling to one side, his eyes fluttering closed, and his hands dropping open to hang off the sides of the cot.

Viggo quivers, his nostrils flaring with the force of his exhalation. He lifts his hand to his own face, his fingers moving around his mouth and nose, fascinated at how tightly his skin clings to his flesh, his flesh to his bones. He pushes one finger into his mouth, exploring the smoothness inside his lower lip, and the points of his teeth. He bites down, feeling the pressure and faint pain snaking up through his wrist and into his arm. Satisfied, he takes his finger out and studies the reddening indentations on his knuckle.

"Nice," he rasps.

"Glad you're pleased," Elijah says weakly, watching Viggo from under his eyelashes.

"You can be generous, in your own way," Viggo grins.

"You're costing me money here," Elijah says, stretching his legs out with some difficulty. "After your shit, I can't get a client for like a day."

Viggo arches an eyebrow but doesn't answer. He unfolds from the cot, stretching lazily and scratching at his chest while he relocates his cigarettes.

"Can't fucking give it away," Elijah goes on, folding his arms behind his head. "Except to Dom. What's with that? You wring me out and no one wants me, but he doesn't even see it."

"Heh. Dom's got his own kind of magic," Viggo shrugs, applying flame to the end of the cigarette between his lips.


	3. A Gambling Man

"Fold," the man on the opposite side of the table says, shaking his head a little as he taps his cards together neatly before tossing them away in disgust.

The two men already leaning back in their chairs empty-handed exchange sympathetic glances with him. There's a silence, if the rhythmic creak of the fan turning overhead, the tinkle of the lounge piano, and the rattle of ice cubes in a cut-crystal tumbler can be considered silence.

"Me too," a fourth player grimaces, pushing his cards away across the white damask tablecloth.

"Just you and me, Dominic," Jude says mildly, his pale eyes steady in his tanned face. "I'll see your five hundred, and raise you another five."

Dom leafs the amount off the stack of bank bills in front of him and drops it on the heap of cash already in the middle of the table.

"Five, and show," he says, flipping his cards face up. "Jack, ten, nine, eight, seven."

Jude laughs, and Dom smirks back at him.

"Ten, nine, eight, seven, six," Jude says, laying his own cards out.

A ripple of disbelief and disgust and amusement goes round the table.

"God damn it," one of the other men protests, "I just folded with a queen."

"I folded with two!"

"Damn it all, Monaghan, that hand ain't worth a red cent, let alone three thousand dollars."

"You didn't even draw a card."

"No point," Dom grins, gathering the pot to him. "You gentlemen already had any cards worth having."

"Another hand?" Jude asks, collecting the scattered cards together again.

"Sure."

"Why not?"

"I still have a buck Mister Monaghan hasn't won yet."

Dom reaches for the glass at his elbow, but it's empty except for a quarter inch of cold water and a bruised sprig of mint leaves. The cards slip smoothly between Jude's slender fingers. A white-jacketed waiter appears at Dom's shoulder, removes the empty glass and the wilted paper coaster underneath it. Jude skims cards off the deck and throws them down in front of each player.

"Let's say a hundred dollars to open," he says.

The waiter puts a new coaster next to Dom and takes a freshly frosted glass off his tray. Dom leans back in his chair just as the waiter moves forward to put the glass down and the back of Dom's head clips the waiter's hand. Two inches of well-iced bourbon go down the back of Dom's shirt and jacket.

"Bloody hell!"

Dom shoves back and stands up so abruptly he rams the chair leg into the waiter's foot.

"Oh shit, bugger, sorry."

"I'm very sorry sir," the waiter says, dabbing at Dom with his towel.

"No, it was my fault," Dom says.

"I'll bring you another drink directly."

"Actually, you know what? I think I've had enough."

The waiter nods, acknowledging Dom's pleasant but firm dismissal, and withdraws.

"In fact, that goes for the cards too," Dom says. "I'll fold."

There's a murmur of surprise and protest.

"You haven't even looked at your hand."

"Just finish this one out."

"I was hopin' to win some of that back."

"Save your breath gentlemen," Jude says. "You won't change his mind. He's been like this as long as I've known him; he'll play for a day or a week or a month, then he'll fold and won't touch a card or a die for anyone."

"Well what's that about? A change in the weather?"

"Something like that," Dom smiles as he leaves a hundred dollar bill for the waiter and folds the rest of his winnings into his wallet.

"And I won't see you later," Jude says. "Will I?"

"No. I'm going to go back to Baton Rouge for a while," Dom says.

There's a flurry of handshakes and leave-taking.

"Shall we get back to business?" Jude asks, as Dom turns away from the table. "It's five card draw, five hundred dollars to stay in."

Cut.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Ewan says, when Elijah reaches the till and off-loads his purchases: a six-pack of iced beer and two fistfuls of assorted candy.

Elijah glances over Ewan's shoulder at his own reflection in the bit of fly-blown mirror festooned with Mardi Gras beads and hanging among the cigarette cartons and fifths of liquor. There're no marks under his eyes, no blemishes on his skin, no lack of blue in his gaze, yet the difference is undeniable. It's like someone turned the lights out inside him.

"Rough day?" Ewan asks sympathetically, bagging up Elijah's stuff.

"Believe me when I say, you cannot begin to imagine," Elijah says, flipping his wallet open.

"Well, you should take it easy, rest up."

"That's the plan," Elijah says, tucking his change away and hefting his bag in the crook of his arm.

He flashes a smile that feels flat and colorless even from his side of it, winning another worried look from Ewan. Elijah shrugs, shouldering his way past a couple of customers blocking the narrow doorway, and steps out into the clinging warmth of the evening.

He walks the few blocks home without making eye contact with anyone. No one half-turns to watch him pass. When he runs foul of the crowd of men spilling out of the Rainbow bar onto the sidewalk, he has to step into the street to skirt them because no one notices him enough to get out of his way. Elijah ducks his head and hunches his shoulders. He's a pale, skinny boy with bug eyes, his hands and feet too big for his frame.

"Watch where you're fuckin' goin' kid," one man complains when Elijah accidentally clips an elbow with his shoulder.

"Sorry," Elijah mutters, quashing the urge to lift his head and nail the guy with the heavy-eyed parted-lipped glance that reduces grown men to stammering blushing incoherence six nights a week. Of course, tonight, it'd come off as a squinty open-mouthed idiot-gape anyway.

Cut.

Dom makes his way through the scattered Tuesday night crowd on Bourbon Street. The tourists give him a second look, his pristine dark gray suit and white shirt and purple silk tie so at odds with their own acid-bright crawfish-porn tee-shirts. Dom's freshly showered and shaved, his bleach-tipped hair smoothed across his brow and spiked up over his crown. The bunch of dark red roses in his hand is enough to make the girls he smiles at blush and giggle. The locals nod in greeting, either recognizing Dom specifically or his fitness for this place generally.

The house on the corner of Saint Louis is in darkness, the door leading out onto the upstairs balcony firmly shut. Dom's pace quickens as he rounds the building to the street gate. His fingers close on the rusted metal bars, and the gate swings open under his hand. He goes up the stairs, finding his way with ease even in the dark. The door on the landing is shut too, the heavy brocade curtain drawn across behind the glass so that not even a sliver of light shows from inside.

"Elijah? It's Dom," he calls, rapping his knuckles on the wood frame of the door.

"It's open."

Dom turns the brass doorknob and opens the door. Elijah, dressed in faded tee-shirt and well-worn denims, is slouched among the pillows on the daybed with his legs folded up in front of him and his bare toes curling in the satin cover. The beer pack, three bottles down, and a surf of empty candy wrappers cover the low gilt table in front of the daybed. Elijah's gazing fixedly at the small television up on the mantle opposite.

"Pick a fucking vowel you moron," he complains.

"You're not working," Dom says, closing the door behind him.

"No I'm – wow, you look nice," Elijah says, finally tearing his attention away from the screen.

Dom ducks his head and resists the impulse to twist his toe in the rug underfoot, though he can feel his ears flushing hotly. Elijah unfolds from his nest and comes towards him.

"Those for me?" Elijah asks, lifting his chin to indicate the flowers Dom's holding.

"Eh, yeah. Sorry. Sort of stupid."

"No it's not, it's nice," Elijah says very gently.

He takes the flowers from Dom, snags the dark glass vase from the mantle next to the television, and goes through the narrow curtained and glass-paneled door to the kitchen.

"I didn't expect to see you 'til later," he says, raising his voice over the sound of a running tap.

"Eh, no. I'm leaving town tonight … I'm going back to Baton Rouge for a while," Dom says.

"Oh."

Elijah returns, the flowers loosely gathered in the vase. He sets it up on the mantle, turns the television off.

"You're not working," Dom says again. "Are you okay? You're not sick are you? You don't look sick."

Elijah's mouth twists a little as he looks up at himself in the gilt-framed mirror above the mantle.

"No, I'm fine, I'm just not working," he says, turning again.

"Oh. Okay. Look, if you just want me to fuck off - "

"No," Elijah says, moving closer to Dom. "Stay. I'm glad you came."

Dom smiles, a lopsided quirk of his mouth, and his eyes shine.

"Okay then," he says very softly.

Elijah reaches out, catching Dom by the sleeve as if afraid he'll leave anyway, but Dom doesn't move. Elijah lets his hand slide down the smooth cloth to Dom's palm, curling his fingers inside Dom's. Dom leans in, leans down a little. Elijah lifts his chin, offering Dom his parted lips.

"Anything you want," Elijah breathes.

Dom's free hand grazes against the slender curve of Elijah's bare bicep.

"Then … let me, let me make you feel good," Dom murmurs.

Elijah exhales a smile.

"Well, I guess, if that's what you really want … "

Dom's smiling too, his hands closing around the small bones of Elijah's shoulders as he pushes forward the last few inches to bring his mouth to Elijah's. The kiss is soft and light, little more than a brush of lips and a touch of tongues. Elijah's mouth is darkly sweet with candy; Dom's is crisp with the taste of mint. Elijah hums appreciatively, his hands moving down Dom's jacket lapels.

"I like you buttoned up like this," Elijah says slyly. "It's like unwrapping a present."

Dom blushes all the way to the tips of his ears. Elijah's fingers slide and curl around the top button of Dom's jacket, slipping it out of its buttonhole. Elijah's hand insinuates its way between the fronts of Dom's jacket.

"Elijah - "

"Shh," Elijah breathes, his eyelids heavy and his eyes darkening. "Slowly. I want to go very slowly."

Dom catches his own lower lip between his teeth, and holds the sound he makes to nothing more than a nasal intake of breath. Elijah turns his hand, easing the two sides of Dom's jacket apart. Dom shudders out the breath he's been holding. Elijah glances up at him from under the dark fringe of his eyelashes, eyes blind blue and starred with white around the black void of his pupils. Elijah curls his fingertips under the mirror-smooth silk of Dom's tie and strokes slowly downwards, letting his knuckles snag on each shirt-button in turn.

"What will you do for me, Dom?" he asks quietly, reaching up again to trace his fingers around the curve of Dom's shirt collar, where the stiff white cloth meets honey-tanned skin.

Dom opens his mouth to answer, but nothing comes out except the click-whisper of his tongue against his teeth. Elijah hooks his index finger inside the knot of Dom's tie and pulls slowly downwards, the silk sliding smoothly.

"Will you lie down with me?" Elijah asks, as the knot pulls free of the other side and unwraps itself. "In my bed … in my sheets?"

Dom exhales shakily. Elijah lets go of the tie and finger-walks his hand back to Dom's collar.

"Will you kiss me? Will you do nothing but kiss me?"

He twists Dom's top button open, and the one below it too.

"Yeah, if that's what you want, that's what I'll do," Dom murmurs, his gaze fixed on Elijah's demurely lowered eyelids.

Elijah wraps the tie's loose end around his hand and draws it slowly out from under Dom's shirt collar. He passes the fold of silk across his mouth, his eyes flickering closed at the cold smoothness of the contact.

"Nice."

He puts the tie down, then returns his attention to Dom's shirt buttons, fingering them deliberately one at a time out of their buttonholes until he reaches Dom's belt buckle. Elijah lifts his face again, his eyes almost shut and his lips parted, and Dom obediently bends his head. This kiss is deeper, but still slow, still lazy. Dom's tongue works slowly between Elijah's teeth, circling the tip of Elijah's tongue. Elijah fists up the crisp shirt cotton over Dom's stomach and pulls, and Dom moans a little into Elijah's mouth at the feeling of the cloth drawing upwards and out of his pants. Elijah pushes into Dom momentarily, his hip against Dom's erection. Dom's tongue stabs deeper into Elijah's mouth; Dom's hands slide from Elijah's shoulders down the delicate ridge of Elijah's spine.

"I think maybe I want more than kisses after all," Elijah says breathlessly when he takes his flushed and swollen lips from Dom's.

Elijah tugs open the last two buttons on Dom's shirt and runs both his hands up over the thin cotton of Dom's undershirt. Dom's eyes are slate-gray shot through with silver as he stares into Elijah's face.

"Anything, anything you fucking want Elijah."

Elijah's hands come around and down and out from inside Dom's shirt and slip under his jacket instead, easing the satin lining outwards on Dom's shoulders.

"Take this off, just this," Elijah says.

Dom rolls his shoulders and his jacket slips off and down his arms. Elijah keeps hold of it so it doesn't fall on the floor. He steps back, still looking into Dom's eyes while smoothing and folding the garment. Then he glances away, half-turning to lay the thing down on the little couch in front of the heavily curtained window.

Dom steps after him, coming up so close behind him that Elijah inhales sharply and arches, his spine against Dom's chest, his head falling back onto Dom's shoulder.

"Undress me," Elijah whispers, tipping his hips enough to press his behind against Dom's cock.

Dom's hands close gently on Elijah's arms, and Dom turns him. Elijah smiles, and lifts his gaze to Dom's face, devouring the glitter in Dom's eyes.

Dom slips his fingers up under the hem of Elijah's faded and worn tee-shirt, both of them shivering at the first touch of Dom's fingertips on the tender skin of Elijah's sides. Dom catches the thin fabric and lifts it; Elijah lifts his arms and tips his head back in complete surrender. Their eyes lock; the moment when the tee-shirt obstructs their view is like a wound, but passes when Elijah emerges again bare and pale and smooth. Dom tosses the shirt to join his jacket on the couch.

"Dom."

Dom runs his hands over Elijah's small frame. Elijah gasps, sways, pushes himself against Dom's touch as Dom thumbs across rose-dark tightened nipples. Dom hooks his chin against Elijah's cheek, turning Elijah's mouth to his. This time the kiss has edges, bright glimpses of teeth against tongues. Elijah's hands come up and wind themselves into Dom's hair. Dom digs his nails into Elijah's back and Elijah arches forward, teeth bared.

Dom drops to his knees and Elijah folds forward a little, steadying himself with one hand on Dom's shoulder. Dom rubs his face against the denim-clad angle of Elijah's hipbone.

"I can smell you, I can fucking smell you," Dom growls.

Dom takes hold of Elijah by the waist of his jeans, thumbing the tarnished brass buttons out of age-softened buttonholes. Elijah's fingers dig into the wedge of muscle where Dom's neck joins his shoulder. Dom gets the buttons undone and pulls the two sides of the fly apart, and the denim is so worn and thinned that he can slide it down Elijah's hips with the flat of his hands, no tugging or pulling or trying. Elijah's wearing blue checkered shorts with a buttonless placket, and his cock's hard enough to tent the fabric away from his belly and hold it open enough for Dom to glimpse the flushed pink shaft and the nest of jet back curls against Elijah's white skin.

Dom curls his hands inside Elijah's jeans, around the backs of Elijah's thighs, and pushes the jeans further down. Elijah shifts his weight, leaning more heavily on Dom, and lifts one bare foot out from among the folds of denim, sets that foot down again on the faded flowered rug. He shifts to the other side, and this time Dom sweeps the shed jeans out from underfoot, pushes them aside.

Dom traces one hand up the back of Elijah's leg, over the taut curve of calf and the too-soft skin behind Elijah's knee, up the shallow curved line of his thigh, up under the loose hem of his shorts to the heated crease between his leg and his ass.

Elijah slips his fingers into the waist of his shorts, but Dom moves to stop him.

"Let me."

Elijah takes his hand away, folding it across his stomach just under the rising and falling edge of his ribcage. Dom eases the soft cloth away from Elijah's skin, hooking the folds over the jutting shaft of Elijah's cock, and down his legs. Step, and step, and Dom pushes the garment aside, and Elijah is naked from head to toe.

Dom's gaze follows Dom's fingertips over pale skin and peach-fuzz fair hair, over the crest of thigh muscle, along the cleanly cut valley of a tendon, over the stretched fine flesh on Elijah's hip.

"Take me to bed Dom," Elijah whispers.

Dom surges up onto his feet, his arms winding around Elijah's torso, Elijah's bare arms slipping sweetly on the crisp white cotton of Dom's shirt as he reaches around Dom's shoulders.

"Take me," he whispers again against the flushed pink shell of Dom's ear, and Dom stoops a little and scoops Elijah up in his arms.

Elijah allows his head to fall forward, eyes closed and face hidden in the warmth of Dom's neck, hands clasped together on Dom's shoulder. Dom carries him through to the bedroom. The lights are off in here but Dom leaves the doors to the lit living room lying open. Elijah flexes in his arms, and Dom lets him down, lets Elijah's slender limbs spill like water out of his grip. Elijah pulls the top layer of brocade-covered pillows off the bed and throws them on the floor. He takes hold of the brocade cover and pulls it back, throwing the stiff folds of rich fabric into a heap at the foot of the bed. He pulls back the cover underneath, exposing the rest of the pillows in their plain white slips and the plain white sheets he sleeps on.

He turns, finding himself almost mouth-to-mouth with Dom again. Elijah inhales sharply, sucking his belly back from the chill contact of Dom's belt-buckle.

"This off, I think," he grins, his fingers quick and sure, the buckle ringing a little as he pulls the belt free and drops it on the floor. "And this."

He takes up one of Dom's hands in his own and removes the cufflink in Dom's shirt cuff, then presses a soft dry kiss into Dom's palm. Elijah lets that hand go, and accepts the other. He undoes the second cufflink and this time licks a little circle into Dom's hand. Dom laughs, but low, with no edges. Elijah lets the heavy gold links slip out of his fingers onto the nightstand. He straightens again and slips both hands inside Dom's open shirt, across smooth white cotton to the bare tanned skin of Dom's shoulders. Dom shrugs helpfully, and Elijah pulls the shirt down his arms and off, and it joins Dom's belt on the floor.

"You have such a fucking great body," Elijah murmurs against Dom's jaw, his hands reacquainting themselves with the satisfyingly thick curves of muscle on Dom's chest and shoulders and arms.

Dom makes an odd off-tone noise and shoves his mouth at Elijah's. The kiss doesn't line up quite right but it doesn't matter, tongues and teeth and fingers clawing into hair. They stumble against each other, Elijah fumbling against the side of the bed. They break apart and Elijah sits down, one hand gripping the edge of mattress as if mistrusting his own balance.

Dom sinks to his knees, settles down on his heels, and lifts his face to look up at Elijah in abject adoration.

"Oh God," Elijah says shakily.

"Lie down," Dom whispers.

Elijah bites into his own lip, brows tensed, but does as he's told. He lies back, his hands shifting restlessly against the chill sheets. He turns his face into the edge of the pillows, hoping to hide the flush he can feel prickling hotly in his cheeks.

Dom's fingers close around Elijah's left ankle. Dom has beautiful hands, long and remarkably slender. Elijah shivers at the feeling of delicate bones under soft skin braceleting around his heel. Dom lifts Elijah's foot, and Elijah tenses, and then Dom's mouth – so soft so warm so liquid – blossoms against Elijah's arch.

Elijah groans aloud, a full-throated shudder of sound. The excruciating softness of Dom's lips sends a ripple of heat up the inside of Elijah's leg. Dom bites gently and Elijah squirms, both flexing away from the too exquisite feeling and pushing further into it.

"Oh fuck, fuck."

Dom's tongue curls around the bone at the inside of Elijah's ankle. Elijah flexes his toes, trying to force the sensation back down where it belongs instead of letting it creep tendrils of fire up his thigh. Dom lowers Elijah's foot and lets it go; Elijah huffs out a sigh of relief, until Dom takes hold of his right foot instead.

Elijah tenses again, his breath getting edgy. Dom's fingertips draw delicate curls over Elijah's instep. Dom blows softly between Elijah's toes. Elijah arches, squirming, and makes a funny little noise of anxious pleasure. Dom kisses the tips of Elijah's second and third toes, and pushes his tongue between them.

"Oh God," Elijah slurs, his other heel thudding against the side of the bed.

Dom lifts his head and laughs, his breath a hot ripple on the bony crest of Elijah's shin. His hand works upwards, curving around Elijah's calf muscle. His mouth comes down on the inside of Elijah's knee. Elijah moans and moves a little, lifting that leg to the side to give Dom easier access. Dom has a hand on each of Elijah's thighs, smearing up along the slender muscles.

Dom works his mouth methodically up the inside of Elijah's thigh, scraping his teeth gently over the skin, winning a stifled little whimper when he reaches the angle between leg and groin. Dom rises up on his knees and nuzzles in closer, lips dragging across pale skin and black hair.

"Nn … yes," Elijah says sharply, one hand going to Dom's hair, not pressing, just curving around Dom's skull.

"You think I'm gonna blow you?" Dom smirks against Elijah's skin. "Is that what you think?"

Elijah makes a shivery shapeless noise that still conveys an admission.

Dom mouths his way along the side of Elijah's shaft. Elijah arches, gasping greedily. Dom veers, his mouth skipping over the head of Elijah's cock and taking up again on Elijah's belly. Elijah laughs out loud and squirms.

Dom grins, the tip of his tongue poking into Elijah's navel. Elijah falls away, limbs relaxing and breath turning tidal as he prepares to wait Dom out. Dom loves this, loves how when teased Elijah just stills, so confident that Dom will get him where he wants to go … eventually.

Dom gets up from his knees and leans over Elijah, hands braced on either side of Elijah's torso. Dom bends his head to Elijah's skin, tasting the delicate angle where Elijah's ribcage caves away into the shallow curve of his waist. Elijah shifts his head against the sheets, his eyes flickering closed and his mouth curling into a smile of absolute contentment. Only the restless pulse of his cock against his belly betrays his calm.

Dom tongues his way up over the soft ridges of Elijah's ribs, around the pink-brown circles of Elijah's nipples, blowing on spit-slick skin until the little nibs pucker tight and Elijah laughs a little breathlessly. Dom finally relents, darting down to catch the tip of Elijah's nipple between his lips, pressing until Elijah jerks and moans. Dom lets go with a deliberate little pop of his mouth, then ducks again lapping his tongue wetly over the abused flesh. Elijah moans again, more raggedly, and his body stirs underneath Dom. Dom softly sucks the nipple and its surrounding aureole into his mouth, one hand splaying flat along Elijah's ribcage to feel how Elijah heaves upward, breath juddering roughly in and out.

"Oh fuck – yes," Elijah gasps, and his hands go to the waist of Dom's pants, fumbling button and zipper and Dom rumbles deep in his chest as the pressure of his pants against his erection eases.

Dom shifts sideways, knuckles dragging slowly across the nipple he's abandoned, lips and teeth teasing the already rigid pip of flesh on the other side. Elijah hisses, fingers clawing at Dom's undershirt and the faintly freckled skin underneath.

"Take it off, take it all off," Elijah says. "I want to have you naked."

Dom doesn't need a second invitation. He takes a parting swipe of his tongue at Elijah's nipple and thrusts back up onto his feet. He strips his undershirt off over his head and drops it, then finishes the job Elijah's half-done of unzipping his pants and lets them drop around his ankles. He bends, peeling his socks off as he kicks out of the discarded garment, then straightens and skins off his black boxers.

Elijah pushes up onto his elbows to watch with greedy glittering eyes. When Dom's naked and stepping forward again, Elijah scoots back a little, lifting his heels onto the edge of the mattress, feet braced apart and knees bent. Dom comes at him, climbing onto the bed between Elijah's legs, body curving over Elijah's as Dom tucks his knees under Elijah's thighs.

"Yes, oh God, please," Elijah says, winding one hand around the nape of Dom's neck and pulling him down to Elijah's lips.

This kiss is hard and deep, Dom shoving his tongue into Elijah's mouth, stabbing and sliding and swirling. Elijah lifts his arms around Dom's shoulders, digs his fingers into Dom's hair. Elijah arches, his smooth skin glancing against the crisp fuzz of hair on Dom's chest. Elijah's inner thigh rubs across Dom's hip and Elijah's bare toes wiggle in the crease behind Dom's knee.

"Easy, easy," Dom says breathlessly as he pulls away and smoothes his hands down Elijah's sides.

Elijah arches up lavishly, laughing, and drops back again.

Dom hums his way down Elijah's belly, and this time there's no skip and tease. Dom's lips glide from Elijah's navel to the sour-slick head of Elijah's cock, around, and down, and Dom takes Elijah into his mouth.

"Oh – see? I _knew_ you would," Elijah says on a laugh.

Dom's fingertips swirl dizzyingly around Elijah's hips and thighs and knees. Elijah writhes, breathless, throwing his arms out above his head, his hands flexing and fisting as he tries to stay loose and lazy despite the ripple of fire dancing along his nerves. Dom's hands run progressively smaller circles over Elijah's skin, the pattern drawing close around the root of Elijah's cock, while Dom's tongue dances a more linear design on the slit at the top.

"Oh God, Dom," Elijah pants, and Dom can feel something more like intent singing in the tendons of Elijah's groin and the muscles of Elijah's smooth thighs. "Don't make me come like this, okay? I don't want to come until we're fucking."

Dom stills, exhaling hard through his nostrils, almost pained by the strength of the lust clutching the pit of his stomach. His eyes close and he moves his head slowly, mouth stretched around Elijah's cock. Gradually he comes back into his skin, back to the slide of Elijah's shaft against his lips, the slip of the leaking head along his tongue.

Dom wraps his fingers around the root of Elijah's cock, squeezing and pulling in concert with the movement of his mouth. Elijah's toes scrape up the backs of Dom's calves, then Elijah relaxes deliberately, his thighs falling open and slack. Dom's free hand wanders behind Elijah's left knee, down his calf, around his ankle. Elijah makes breathless little sounds, his hips shifting restlessly.

Dom draws back slowly, Elijah's cock dragging a spit-shiny smear across Dom's lower lip as it finally pulls free. Dom turns his head sharply and reaches out, yanking open the drawer of the nightstand and rifling through the contents. He shoves aside the heavy rounded glass jar full of the weird fucking shit Viggo cooks up, and locates the prosaic plastic tube of lube hiding further back.

Elijah's watching Dom with eyes glazed brilliant blue with lust. The pop of the tube's flip-top seems loud even against the steady hum of the air-conditioning. Dom squeezes out some of the gel onto his fingers, and it makes a little wet burping noise and Elijah laughs, but shakily. Dom tosses the tube and leans in again, fingertips working a slow circle against Elijah's hole. Elijah bites his lip, huffing out a little sound of amusement and pleasure at the soothing chill of the gel.

"Mm. Nice," he says breathlessly then jagged and shocked "oh _nice_ ," as Dom pushes in with one long slender finger, curling and crooking until Elijah feels the push and press of something dirty and delicious inside.

Dom works his finger in and out slowly, feeling Elijah ease around him almost at once. Elijah hitches one bare foot against Dom's thigh, toes flexing on Dom's skin.

"Please. Again."

Dom dips his head and sucks the head of Elijah's cock into his mouth, making his tongue soft and smothering. Elijah cries out, a sharp little broken sound, and rocks under him. Dom pushes his finger in deeper and twists it back out again, matching the rhythm to the swirl and flick of his tongue.

Slow, very slow and steady and smooth. Dom can feel the little shudders running through Elijah's body, and the increasing tension in the foot braced against his knee.

"Oh God, Dom, please," Elijah pants.

Dom slides his finger free, fumbles for and finds the tube of lube again. He spreads out another smear of gel on his fingers, pushes the tube aside, and this time pierces Elijah with two fingers aligned side by side.

Elijah's body grips and grinds around Dom's fingers, and Elijah growls with satisfaction.

Dom finds the perfect slow and steady pace again. His breath and Elijah's fall into a single tidal pull and push, Dom's nostrils flaring full of warm skin smell and Elijah's lips parting around ragged little cries of pleasure. Elijah's hips rock and rise in unison with the flex and strain of Dom's arm muscles, the stretch and yield of Dom's throat. Elijah's heel digs down hard into the front of Dom's thigh as Elijah strains upwards and his breathing shatters.

"Okay – that's it – you have to stop – stop," he gasps, fingers twisting in Dom's hair.

Dom backs off slowly, letting Elijah's cock go with a parting lick and a smear of his lips across the slippery skin. He pulls his fingers free with equally lingering reluctance, wringing a shaky moan from Elijah. When the contact finally breaks, Elijah shivers deliciously. He sits up, tangling his legs over Dom's and scooting his way into Dom's lap. Elijah catches Dom's jaw in both hands and pulls Dom's in and shoves his tongue into Dom's mouth for a messy, grateful kiss.

"Okay, that's enough slow," Elijah says breathlessly against Dom's lips. "Let's fuck."

Dom laughs, but he's quick enough about patting blindly around with one hand in the sheets and relocating the lube. It's not exactly easy getting the tube open and a decent blob of the stuff onto his fingers while Elijah's in his face, all eyes and lips and scorching breath, but Dom gets it done somehow. It's not exactly easy getting the gel transferred from his fingers to his cock while Elijah's sitting in his lap, rolling his hips and grinding his ass against Dom's thighs in an impatient pantomime of what Dom fervently hopes they'll be doing for real in a couple of seconds.

Elijah leans back, taking his weight on one hand extended behind him, and lifts himself up and slightly out of Dom's lap. He reaches between them with his free hand, fingers rapping around the shaft of Dom's cock, guiding him to the already slick and easy opening of Elijah's body. Dom throws his head back sharply and gasps for air as he feels the first exquisite contact. A ripple of pure fire flickers over his skin as the slippery softness of Elijah's hole yields.

Elijah smiles, eyes falling half-closed. Dom stills, suddenly distanced from everything except Elijah's eyes gleaming dark and secretive under thick eyelashes. Elijah eases down, slow but relentless. Dom's breath breaks open again and his eyes fly wide and he's being pushed through soft crushing fire and the sensation is almost more than he can bear.

"Dom," Elijah breathes, when they're locked together tight and Elijah's folded forward against Dom's chest with his arms around Dom's shoulders.

Dom swallows hard, trying to make enough room in his throat for words but it won't work so he's reduced to pressing his mouth over Elijah's, because he doesn't want Elijah to say more if he can't answer. Elijah twines his arms tighter around Dom's neck, hitching his weight up and letting it drop, rocking in Dom's lap. The friction between them razors delicately along Dom's nerves, sending shivers up and down his spine. Dom reaches down between their bellies, his slick fingers closing around the top of Elijah's cock.

"Oh – fuck – fucking _perfect_ ," Elijah mutters, pulling away from Dom's mouth.

Dom concentrates on swirling his fingers gently around the head of Elijah's cock, a touch he knows drives Elijah crazy when it's done just right. Elijah lets his head fall up and back, eyes closed and lips parted. Dom's gaze skitters up the line of pale extended throat and downy jaw, and over the lavish curves of Elijah's mouth. He's so fucking beautiful, so fucking hot, Dom can never really believe he's allowed to do this. Not when Dom's paying, and so much more when he's not.

"Oh God oh fuck," Elijah cries, his voice going thin and desperate as they push against each other with increasing determination.

And this is special, this is something Dom doesn't get when he's a paying customer. Money doesn't buy Elijah slowly shattering, his brows drawing together anxiously, his fingers flexing and reflexing on Dom's shoulders. Money doesn't buy Elijah dropping his forehead into the angle between Dom's neck and shoulder, his eyelashes sweeping butterfly wings against Dom's sensitized skin. Dom thrusts up into Elijah more aggressively.

"Fuck – God – please," Elijah begs, his mouth scorching its way along Dom's jaw to Dom's ear. "Oh please please - "

There's a high note of pure panic in his voice now, and Dom's body shimmers in response.

"I'm gonna come. _Fuck_. I'm gonna come," Elijah cries, fingers clamping down hard on Dom's arms and his chin digging into Dom's shoulder.

He doesn't come with his tricks, not even with Dom if Dom's paying for it. This you get for free or not at all. Dom moves his fingers more quickly on Elijah's cock and pushes up hard into Elijah's ass.

Elijah's fingernails bite so deep into Dom's shoulders that Dom hisses in pain and then he feels Elijah's cock pulse pulse pulse against the pads of his fingers and Elijah's body ripples around Dom's cock and Elijah's semen is silkily sliding over Dom's hand.

"Oh!"

Elijah quivers, jerks, quivers again. His fingernails slowly detach from the red crescents scored into Dom's skin. Elijah lifts his head, smiling blurrily, and slides his hand along the crooked line of Dom's jaw to draw Dom's mouth to his. Elijah's kiss is soft and shaky, his lips warm and swollen against Dom's.

Dom tips him back, easing them both down among the cool crumpled sheets. Elijah's eyes are full of quiet fire, gazing up at Dom as Dom settles between Elijah's thighs. Dom palms sweat-spiked tendrils of dark hair off Elijah's temples and pushes his cock deep into Elijah's unresisting body.

"Oh – yes," Elijah falters, his breath pushing out in a broken sigh at each thrust of Dom's hips. "That feels – so good – so good, Dom."

Dom drops his head, overwhelmed, and presses his face against the cooling skin of Elijah's throat even as he works himself in and out of Elijah's body with increasing conviction. Elijah makes fractured little noises, his fingers flexing and unflexing on Dom's shoulders, one heel rubbing soothing circles against Dom's hip.

Dom pushes back up onto his hands, hips shoving and pushing and twisting, wanting it to never end yet compelled to urgency.

"You're so - fucking _good_ ," Elijah pants, hands hooking around his bended knees and pulling his thighs in against his chest and further apart.

"Oh – Christ," Dom manages between choked breaths.

Elijah tips his head back, throat stretched taut, spine arching away from the bed a little, forcing a change of angle and tightening himself down on Dom's cock.

It's too much for Dom, Elijah's too tight and deep and slick. Elijah's too fucking beautiful, all cindered eyes and softly snarling mouth. Something trembles in Dom's guts, then shakes and shudders through his body. Elijah's fingers are in his hair and Elijah's crooning quietly

"yes that's it that's it yes"

and then

then

lightening strikes Dom gasps loudly

and he can feel the earth fucking shaking or the bed is or he is at any rate, and it rolls through him like thunder edged with pulsing fire and he cries out but only distantly hears himself and

God

it slows – slows – slows

God.

Elijah's kisses fall upward onto his eyes and cheeks and chin like gentle rain on the trailing edge of the storm. Elijah untangles them from each other, his hands guiding Dom's slackly shivering limbs. Elijah rolls them over and Dom spills unresisting onto his back. Elijah leans over him, dropping soft kisses on Dom's flushed face. Elijah lies down, curling against Dom's side. The air-conditioning hums. Dom half-dozes, dreaming himself sleeping on a transatlantic flight, lulled by the sound of the big seven-four-seven engines.

He wakes with a start; Elijah stirs in his sleep but doesn't waken. Dom lifts his arm and looks at the face of his heavy gold wristwatch. He's been out for almost an hour; it's close to midnight. He's pushing his luck, literally.

Carefully he eases away from Elijah, pausing for a long beat to peer in the half-darkness at the pale curve of Elijah's cheek and the dark smudge of his mouth. Then Dom gets up and gathers his clothes and goes into the sitting-room to dress. He's shrugging his suit jacket back on and tucking his rolled-up tie into his pocket when Elijah speaks softly from the darkened bedroom.

"Do you know how long you'll be gone?"

Dom presses his lips together.

"No," he says at last.

Elijah doesn't answer, but Dom hears the whisper of sheets moving over skin. Something pale moves in the half-dark, and then Elijah steps onto the threshold between the two rooms. Dom stares at him, at his naked skin and slender body and huge eyes.

"Call me when you come back," Elijah says very softly.

Dom nods. There's an awkward moment while they each wait for the other to say something more than that. Eventually Dom shrugs and shakes his head and moves away. He goes out, closing the door gently behind him, and goes down the stairs and out of the street gate and doesn't let himself look back up at the house to see if the lights come on again.


	4. Crown Princess

The only thing Elijah would change about Satine's, if he could, would be the lighting in the men's room. It's just a little too bright. He can see why, of course: you don't put all that money into ceiling-to-floor antiqued mirrors and red-veined black Italian marble sinks and restored nineteenth-century parquet floors and then not light it well enough to see every detail. But still, it's just a little too much.

It suits him, though. It knocks blue-black highlights out of his freshly dyed spiked hair, makes his skin glow pearl-white, makes his eyes look as flat and bright and aqua as his gauze shirt. Elijah flexes his hands, renewing his grip on the edge of the sink, and smiles at himself in the mirror.

"Fucking beautiful you're so fucking beautiful," the guy behind him gasps against his ear as he thrusts his cock in Elijah's ass.

Elijah's smile twists and he shifts his weight, lifting one arm and reaching back to pull his partner's face closer to his.

"Lover," Elijah breathes, and he feels the other man's body hum, drawn tight with expectation and then – there – he grunts harshly and Elijah pushes back and keeps pushing and he can feel the delicate pulsing in his ass and it flutters weaker and weaker and finally dies away completely.

"Oh fuck. Oh fuck," the guy's panting, his hands numbly smoothing down Elijah's sides, over gauzy shirttails and bare hips and the soft folds of leather jeans pushed down around Elijah's thighs.

"I need to - " Elijah moves his hips a tiny bit.

"Oh yeah fuck sorry," the guy says at once, grimacing as he withdraws his cock from Elijah's ass. Elijah leans across and pulls a fistful of tissue from the box behind the sink and wipes himself off before hitching his jeans around his hips.

"Fuck," the john says again as Elijah takes up the hundred-dollar bill sitting on the countertop and goes into one of the stalls. "Look, if you want to - "

"No thanks," Elijah says over the sound of the toilet flushing.

"I'd pay you like – I'd pay you – five hundred dollars. If you wanna come back to the hotel - "

"Look, I already said no," Elijah says sharply, banging the stall-door on its hinges and shouldering past the other guy to put his hands under the faucet. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Shit. I'm sorry, I didn't … "

"No, I'm sorry," Elijah mutters, wincing at the way the guy's hunching his hands into his jeans' pockets. "I just – just forget it, okay?"

Cut.

Elijah's back sitting at the bar pushing his beer bottle around on the polished wood surface when someone appears abruptly at his left shoulder.

"If you buy me a drink I'll let me take you home and fuck you," Viggo rasps at Elijah's ear.

"The fuck, man?" Elijah demands, drawing back in annoyance. "They let you in here?"

Viggo shrugs elaborately, his expression conveying resigned mystification. On proper inspection, though, Elijah sees that Viggo's actually looking quite sharp. His fair brown hair's hanging in a limply shining curtain around his face and he's clean-shaven. He's dressed in a thin black jacket unbuttoned over an open-necked white shirt and a pair of black dress pants. The liquidly soft cloth and smooth tailoring of the jacket bespeak high quality and considerable expense, as do his snakeskin boots. Around his throat, inside the open collar of his shirt, he's wearing a scrap of feather and a clay bead on a bit of black silk thread.

"Shit. You were actually a pretty good-looking guy before you started mainlining magic," Elijah says.

"So you are going to buy me a drink?"

"No I'm not gonna buy you a drink. Jesus Viggo, you don't hustle drinks from a hooker."

Viggo sighs wearily and beckons to catch the barman's attention.

"I'll have a bourbon, no ice," Viggo says, "and my lady friend will have another one of whatever it is he's drinking."

Elijah rolls his eyes and turns his beer bottle so the barman can see the label.

"Where's Dominic? I haven't seen him around the last few days," Viggo says, extracting his wallet from his inside pocket.

"He's gone to Baton Rouge."

"Ah."

There's a pause while Viggo fingers through the unfamiliar sheaf of bills and credit cards in his wallet and Elijah thunks the base of his beer bottle on the bar.

"Let's get a table," Viggo says when their drinks have arrived and are paid for.

"What's wrong with the bar?" Elijah says irritably, though he's already slithering down off his seat.

"I'd like to enjoy your company without an endless succession of suitors trying to catch your attention by waving fifty-spots behind my back."

Viggo leads the way to an unoccupied table in the far corner and sits down in the booth seat, facing the room, leaving Elijah to straddle one of the bent-wood chairs with his back to everyone except Viggo. Viggo digs around in his jacket pockets and comes up with a small butter-suede tobacco pouch and a packet of rolling papers.

"Here, put all that manual dexterity to some benign use," he says dryly.

Elijah scowls but does as he's told, leafing a single square of thin paper out of the packet and folding it neatly.

"So how come you're out mingling with the warm meat on a Friday night?" Elijah asks, carefully sowing a line of tobacco shreds along the folded paper. "Shouldn't you be face down in a pool of your own body fluids about now?"

"All play and no work makes Viggo a boy who can't make his rent," Viggo says, his attention on Elijah's small pale fingers as they pick up and begin to roll the tobacco inside the paper.

Elijah delicately licks along the edge of the paper and finishes rolling up the cigarette.

"Here," he says, passing it to Viggo and flipping him the matchbook from the clean glass ashtray on the table before starting in on another cigarette for himself.

"That," Viggo says, turning the smooth slender roll-up in his fingers, "is a thing of beauty. Ah crap, here's business."

Elijah glances over his shoulder, his expression of open curiosity souring to annoyance when he sees Liv making her way towards them. She's causing a little ruffle among the other patrons as she passes, as if they've never before seen five feet ten of willowy female with a cascade of dark satin hair hanging loose around her shoulders and a swollen flushed mouth like she gets kissed for a living. She's wearing a black lace slip over a cream-colored silk one, and at first glance it looks like the lace is over her naked skin. Elijah purses his lips and returns his attention to the paper and tobacco shreds.

"What are you doing here?" Liv asks Elijah when she reaches the table.

"He's prostituting himself, same as me," Viggo says, putting his cigarette between his lips.

"Elijah, would you excuse us?" Liv says, ignoring Viggo.

"Fuck you," Elijah says with great satisfaction, finishing off his cigarette and sticking it in his mouth.

Liv's face tightens with suppressed fury.

"Viggo, make him leave, I'm not discussing this in front of him."

"Elijah, leave," Viggo says without conviction, fiddling a match lit and putting the flame to his cigarette.

"Fuck you," Elijah says again, less aggressively.

Viggo shrugs apologetically at Liv.

"You'll have to excuse him, he's missing his boyfriend."

"He's _not_ my boyfriend," Elijah says sharply, taking the matchbook back from in front of Viggo.

Viggo's right eyebrow hitches upwards in wry amusement.

"So beautiful and yet so stupid," he says.

"What the fuck's that supposed to mean?" Elijah demands on a ruffle of exhaled smoke.

"I rest my case," Viggo smirks. "Liv, babe, either sit down or go away. You're blocking my light."

"God damn it Viggo, _I'm_ the one paying _you_ , remember?"

"Yes, but it's not very civil of you to rub my nose in it."

Liv shudders out a frustrated sigh and sits down between them, glaring at Elijah. Elijah drags on his cigarette with exaggerated enjoyment.

"Don't mind him," Viggo says languidly. "I trust him as much as I'd trust any random boy-whore I met in an expensive bar. Liv, you poisonous flower, what do you want?"

"God. How do I know you're even for real?" Liv demands. "You probably just sell like really bad dope to the tourists. That's it, isn't it?"

"If it is, you're a fuckin' idiot for coming to me," Viggo rasps, leaning across the table towards her. "Are you a fuckin' idiot, Liv?"

Liv wrinkles her nose in disgust. Viggo smiles darkly and leans back in his seat.

"So tell me," he says. "If you don't tell me, Liv, I can't get it for you."

"I want – I want you to make me Queen of Mardi Gras," Liv says in a rush, narrowing her eyes as if daring Viggo to laugh at her, but he doesn't so much as flicker an eyelid.

"Oh woman you're delusional," Elijah crows. "The Queen of Mardi Gras's picked from the oldest families in New Orleans. You're a fucking club-singer from California."

"And you got off the fucking bus from Iowa."

"Yeah but I'm not trying to be Queen of Mardi Gras," Elijah counters.

"Pity," Viggo says mildly. "That's a project I could really fuckin' get behind."

"Anyway," Liv sneers at Elijah, "I've got more right to it than any of those inbred fucking bitches. My father was king of a crewe; I was fucking _conceived_ at Mardi Gras."

"Okay, it just about kills me to say it, but she's got a point," Viggo says to Elijah. "That's some strong fuckin' juju right there. Maybe bring some fuckin' juice to the party this year instead of those pageant queens they usually pick. Besides, babe, I kinda feel like I owe your dad one. Steven Tyler, king of Orpheus, nineteen seventy-six … I was twenty-one. Came to that party and never fuckin' went home again."

"So you can do it?" Liv insists.

Viggo shrugs.

"Sure. Why not? I make fuckin' kings all the time. Yeah, I can do you okay. There's a ceremony, I'm gonna need some stuff, some of your hair, something from your clothes … "

"Okay," Liv says suspiciously. "But I'm not doing anything really weird. And I am not, I repeat _not_ having sex with you."

"I'm fuckin' relieved to hear it," Viggo creaks.

Cut.

The oil burns dirtily in the soot-smudged glass jars, long yellow flames licking into ribbons of black smoke. The doors and all the windows are tightly closed, but the air's still restless, stirring the lights and making the shadows sway in the corners of Viggo's room. The masks and dolls and plaster saints seem to tilt dangerously, and something dry and rustling is moving between the table-legs and behind the dresser.

Liv, stripped to her underwear, is kneeling on the floor in the center of a torn square of rusty-stained sheeting. Her hair's hanging in her face, half-veiling her wide eyes and parted lips.

"Shit shit _shit_ ," Liv whispers vehemently to herself as something quick and cold brushes past her bare shoulder.

Viggo, gleaming black and red and his teeth shining white in his streaked face, lunges at her. Liv scrambles back, wild-eyed. Viggo's hand flashes out, snatching hold of her wrist and jerking her back to him. Liv squeezes her eyes shut, cringing away from the fever-heat touch of his bare chest.

"If you're afraid, they're gonna fuckin' rip you apart," Viggo rasps. "They're gonna shove their torn-tin-can claws into your meat and tear it off your fuckin' bones."

Liv makes a sound like an angry sob but her eyes flash open, burning dry, and she glares at Viggo.

"That's good, that's better," he says.

He's wrestling with her wrists, smearing something warm and faintly stinging on her skin despite her instinctive struggles.

"You know what the kings and queens are, babe? They're gateways. Conduits. Gaping fuckin' holes between this world and the loa. You know what it's like where the loa are?"

"No," Liv says sharply, jerking her head around at the sudden ruffling of cloth in the corner under the table.

"No," Viggo echoes. "You don't, none of us do. That's the thing we can't know, and live. That's the thing we can't know, and still be sane. But one thing's for fuckin' sure, though. They ever make it through to this side, and we're all gonna learn to scream a hell of a lot louder."

Liv stifles another gasp as Viggo finally releases her. She rubs at her wrist, trying to ease the ache in the bones where he's been crushing her with his grip.

"But they want in, babe, they fuckin' want in," Viggo growls against her ear.

Liv shudders, her head coming up and back, the tangle of her long hair sliding back off her shoulders and streaming down her back.

"They're pushing at it, pushing at our world, at the boundaries between us," Viggo says, and there's a rattle in his throat like the gurgle of a man choking on his own blood. "Trying to fuckin' get _in_."

The thing in the corner flops, lies quivering. Liv sinks her teeth into her own lower lip, hard.

"So every year, once a year, we open the gates. Let the pressure off. A hundred thousand people absorb the power that comes through; they eat it drink it dance it fuck it, and we're sorta saved for one more year."

Viggo grabs her by the back of the neck, yanking her with him when he throws himself down on the floor, stretched out, grabbing at the thing in the shadows. Liv cries out, trying to pry his hand out of her hair.

"You gonna do that, Liv? You gonna be a gate, a hole, a fuckin' hole for it? You gonna be the big one, the Queen, the Goddess, the fuckin' loa Mother, the Bride, the Whore, the Virgin that makes us all dance and weep and fuck? You gonna save the world, babe?"

"Yes, fucking yes."

Viggo drags the cloth-swathed thing into his lap and plunges his hands into the folds and –

something black and gleaming and a wild flapping and black eyes glass bead shine black beak ebony glow

it's a bird

flapping its wings frantically and thrashing its body but Viggo has it by both claws and all it can do is flap and snake itself around in his grip –

it's a crow

Viggo thrusts it at her and Liv jerks back, gasping at the scratch of claws or beak across her tender skin and then Viggo grabs her throat thrusts his face his mouth Liv screams and there's the batter of satin feathers in her face his fingers brown hard wrapped tight around that thrashing body Viggo's snarl white teeth black down oh

bite

tear

the bird makes a sound like a screaming man and

warm red spatter she feels it before she sees it smells it tastes it

tear

wrench

flesh fraying like rotten cloth so red so black so dark inside and

Viggo's eyes brilliant blue like lightening roll up in his head

and he shoves the torn corpse at her and she gags but too late too late the blood's on her mouth and

Cut.


	5. The Once and Future King

It's early morning by the time Dom lets himself into the house in Baton Rouge. Sunlight, brilliant but still pure and cool with dawn, spills across the black and white stone tiles in the front hallway. Dom sets his bag down under the curled gilt table; the mass of flowers in the vase are just past their best, petals beginning to bruise along their edges and scent turning sickly sweet. He drops his keys on the table and his suit jacket on the spindly chair next to it, then makes his way up the left side of the curving double staircase.

Dom takes the turn of the landing into the dimness of the upstairs hallway. He stops at a pair of white-painted paneled double-doors. With deliberate care he turns the tarnished brass handle and eases one half of the doors open with only the minimum of creaking from the hinges. He slips inside and presses the door closed again behind him.

The curtains are parted just enough to admit a thin blade of dust-mote-dancing sunlight into the gloom. Dom heels his shoes off and pulls his shirttails out his pants. He unbuckles his belt as he crosses the room to the rather magnificent half-tester bed with its carved mahogany vines and its yards of faded silk draperies.

Dom pulls his shirt off over his head without unbuttoning it, then strips his undershirt off, tossing both garments in the general direction of the gilt-framed armchair in the corner. He drops his socks on the floor but shakes his pants out when he's shucked them and drapes them on the chair back. He skins his shorts down off his hips and lets them lie where he steps out of them.

Dom lifts the pearly white sheet, the cotton softer and richer than velvet between his fingers. Slipping into the bed is like submerging himself in a cool milky pool. Ian, who's been sleeping curled on his side with his bare back presented to Dom, rolls over in a slither of sheets against skin and silk pajama pants.

Dom lies still, eyelids flickering in pleasure as Ian's warmly soft palm skims upwards over Dom's naked thigh and hip and belly. Ian, eyes still closed, smiles lazily and rumbles deep in his chest.

"Dominic."

"No," Dom smirks.

"Loathsome boy," Ian says fondly, forefinger and thumb closing on Dom's nipple and applying just enough pressure to make Dom's breath stutter to a halt in his throat. "Everything all right?"

The sustained too-gentle pinch of Ian's fingers is maddening, the little flutter of sensation making Dom want to squirm.

"Just the usual," he says, then drags his teeth over his bottom lip. "Mmn. Could you … ?"

"Hmm? Oh, give that a little - "

Ian tweaks hard enough to make something flutter densely inside Dom's pelvis. Dom inhales sharply, flexing his fingers where they're curled on the pillow beside his face and closing his eyes. Ian rolls the hardening pip of flesh firmly between his fingertips.

"Better?" he asks blandly.

Dom makes a sloppy sound of assent, because it does seem to be an improvement to have little ripples of bright red heat dancing down over his belly and into his balls. Ian pinches harder, and Dom gasps, his spine arching powerfully as the wave of pleasure washes down his body then falls back, leaving him quivering as Ian lets go.

"There, all done," Ian says brightly.

Dom laughingly howls in protest and shifts under the sheets, fruitlessly trying to rub out the ghost throb of the pinch against the too-smooth cloth. In frustration he smears his own fingers across his nipple, then rubs his knuckles back and forth across the reddening point.

Ian shifts, rising up on his elbow to lean over Dom. Delicately Ian picks up the edge of the sheet and lifts it off Dom's chest, exposing Dom's hand plucking at his own nipple. Ian tosses the sheet further back, uncovering Dom's belly and the heavy shaft of his cock lying aslant and more than half-hard on his hip.

"Lovely."

Dom keeps his eyes firmly closed, feeling a little flush prickle in his face and the tips of his ears. His breath comes unevenly, and it's both awkward and exciting to keep circling his fingers on his nipple, knowing that Ian's glass-blue eyes are devouring the gesture. Dom draws his legs up slightly and pushes his feet apart, opening his legs.

"Ian."

"No," Ian says, his tone all innocent confusion.

Dom's eyes flash open on his breaking laughter, and Ian's grinning back at him from under the fallen wing of silver hair hanging on his forehead.

"Fuck you," Dom sputters.

"Oh no, please, fuck _you_ ," Ian replies courteously.

Dom's laughing in earnest now, drawing his knees up as if he's being tickled. Ian slides his fingertips along Dom's naked side, and Dom unravels back into the pillows and sighs contentedly. Ian slow-blinks a heartfelt smile at him, then turns over, pulling open the drawer of the nightstand and rummaging about among his reading glasses and paperback and loose cufflinks until he locates the bottle of lube. He rolls back toward Dom and sits up.

"Thanks for always taking me in," Dom says.

"I'm very nobly resisting the urge to say 'likewise'," Ian says, lifting one brindled eyebrow.

He moves to face Dom, kneeling between Dom's splayed thighs. Dom lazily runs the tips of his fingers up and down his own chest. Ian unbuttons the placket of his pajama pants, pushes the soft fabric aside, and pulls out the thick shaft of his cock.

"Up you come," he says, one hand cupping behind one of Dom's ankles and guiding his foot upwards.

Dom lifts both legs, setting his heels on the break of Ian's shoulders. Ian flips the cap of the lube bottle and pours a little into his cupped palm. Dom rubs his heel against the swell of Ian's shoulder. The muscles of Ian's upper arm flex and roll under his parchment-fine skin with the motion of his hand on his own cock.

"That's it," Ian says rather absently as he shifts in even closer, and Dom unconsciously fists up the sheet under him and holds his breath.

Ian pushes the head of his cock against Dom's hole, and Dom makes a small stifled sound at the first touch of cool slick skin, silky over unforgiving hardness. Ian shifts his hands to Dom's hips, long fingers splayed wide and digging into the sides of Dom's waist. Ian pushes harder, and Dom bites his lip, waiting for the blunt pressure to turn into something sharper.

"Breathe Dominic," Ian says firmly, and Dom abruptly sobs out the lungful of exhausted air he hasn't realized he's been holding.

He gulps down a few rapid breaths while Ian maintains but doesn't force the pressure at his hole. Then, keeping his gaze locked on Ian's glowing eyes, Dom schools himself to slow deep breaths. Ian smiles approvingly.

Dom's breath staggers a little as Ian pushes harder and something yields helplessly and Dom feels the first too-intense stretch as Ian forces his way in a little. Dom clenches his fists tight and presses his head back into the pillows.

"Nah ah, don't tense," Ian says. "Bear down sweetheart, bear down."

Dom releases his grip on the sheet and shakes his hands out, trying to flip the tension from his muscles. He wriggles his toes and rolls his head from side to side. Then, trying to leave his stomach muscles slack, he pushes down with the muscles of his arse and there's a sickening slide and slither and something crams in his guts and he smears out a cry of desperate delight.

"Oh – God!"

"Nearly there, nearly there," Ian croons, one hand shifting to press down on Dom's stomach, as if trying to soothe the wild fluttering in Dom's guts.

"No – don't - it's too big," Dom says querulously.

"You say the sweetest things," Ian smirks.

Dom laughs rather unsteadily and flexes his toes. Ian hitches against the backs of Dom's thighs and Dom feels a rush like vertigo and another slide – sweet friction and too much and so good – and there's the pressure of Ian's hips against his arse as well as the wilder push of Ian's cock inside him.

"Oh."

Ian pours some more lube into his hand and rubs his fingers over his palm to take the chill off, then wraps his broad hand around the top of Dom's cock. Dom's head goes back sharply and his eyes stutter closed.

"Oh – fuck."

"That's nice, is it?" Ian asks, his soft palm sliding wetly around and working Dom's foreskin against the smooth flesh of his glans.

"Oh - _fuck_."

"So if I keep doing this," Ian says, his hand describing a particularly delicious rotation, "perhaps you won't object if I also do - _this_."

Ian pulls his cock back slowly and then thrusts in hard.

"Fuck!" Dom yells, his body arching off the bed and intensifying the angle of attack between Ian's cock and his arse.

"I'll take that as a 'no I don't mind at all'," Ian says blithely, and repeats the maneuver.

Dom thrashes, gasping for air and grabbing at the sheets again. This time Ian doesn't correct him, just pulls back and pounds in. Dom cries out, a shapeless sound of horrified pleasure.

"Oh sweet boy," Ian purrs as Dom arches to meet the next stroke, screwing his eyes shut and groaning brokenly.

Ian takes his time, alternating between a slow twisting stroke on Dom's cock and a quicker lighter pull with his hand while maintaining the inexorable stab of his cock in Dom's arse. Dom writhes, panting profanities.

As Dom grows increasingly frantic, Ian feels Dom's body tightening down on him and beginning to quiver. Dom's cock, already thick and hard, seems to stiffen even more. Dom claws at the bed sheets. Ian flutters his hand against the head of Dom's cock. Dom whiplashes, yelling, and his semen spatters out glossy white and thick and Ian hisses in pleasure as Dom's hole pulses hard around the root of his cock.

Ian takes his hand off Dom's cock, haphazardly wiping his palm off along the length of Dom's quaking thigh, but doesn't ease back on the snap and shove of his hips against Dom's arse. Dom's a limply gasping mess for a minute, then he makes a small noise of complaint as Ian continues to pound into him.

"It's too much," he manages, trying to flex away from Ian to escape some of the depth of penetration.

"No it's not," Ian growls, both hands sliding under the arch of Dom's spine and lifting him slightly to open his hole even more to the rough thrusts of Ian's cock.

Dom stutters out a shaking cry. Ian palms Dom's balls, rolling and squeezing them. Dom's cock lies thickly soft and reddened on his belly, but his body refocuses, beginning to string itself tight again. He snarls and whips his head from side to side on the pillow.

"Lovely."

Ian shoves in hard enough to drive another trembling cry from Dom's lips.

"Ah _fuck_ ," Dom keens, toes curled tight as he arches up tensely against Ian's body.

Ian's thrusts begin to abbreviate, growing shallower but faster. Dom shudders out a sigh of relief that folds into a panicked little moan as he realizes his body's drawing tighter and tighter around Ian's cock.

"Nn. I can't," he gasps, but the vibration low in his belly makes him suspect he can.

His cock is still soft, but the slide of it against his come-slicked belly is like white-fire shimmering on his nerves. Every jolt of Ian's hips against his arse rings through Dom's bones, and Ian's cock in his hole is a chaos of heat and friction and desperate overwhelming pleasure that fills his guts and belly and threatens to overspill and

does

and Dom feels the violent quiver of it wrack him from head to toe. He throws his head back and squeezes his eyes shut and just _yells_ wordlessly.

"Well done," Ian growls, his thrusts turning deep and punishing again.

He's gripping Dom's hips so tightly that the flesh has wrung itself numb and now all Dom can distantly feel is the pressure of fingers on bone. Dom's body falls loose, and Dom's eyelids flicker heavily, the edges of Dom's vision spangling black. Ian gasps against Dom's knee where it's hooked over Ian's shoulder.

Ian's rhythm fails; his hips stab awkwardly and Dom arches in agonized bliss at the wrong so-right angle of the thrust forcing more pleasure from already sated flesh. Ian's cock pulses heavily, and Ian grinds out a thick exhalation of satisfaction. Dom's body trembles in sympathetic relief. The sensation of Ian's cock spurting inside Dom gradually falters and fades.

Dom gulps down air and waits for his body to resolidify from its current mush.

Ian grumbles as he draws his softening cock out of Dom's arse and makes Dom groan weakly. Ian eases Dom's legs down off his shoulders and himself out from between Dom's thighs. Ian stretches out on his back, yawning and covering his mouth with his hand.

Dom arches again, moaning in delight at the little tremors still running periodically along his nerves.

"What a terrible mess you've made," Ian says, cleaning his fingers on the thigh of his pajama pants.

Dom smiles, but doesn't have the energy to answer. His eyelids weigh a fucking ton each, and when he blinks he doesn't have the strength to lift them again, so he leaves them closed. Ian's wiping at Dom's hip with something cool and smooth, but Dom's losing the edges of the sensation in the blur of sleep.

"I don't _feel_ unlucky," he murmurs.

"You're safe here," Ian says gently.

Cut.

Dom wakes to find the room rich with the deep golden light of afternoon. He sits up, wincing a smile at the sweet stab of discomfort along each thigh muscle and the pleasure-echo still humming in his arse. He clambers off the bed on Ian's side and picks up the gray silk kimono discarded across the armchair in front of the heavily-draped window.

Dom pulls on Ian's kimono as he crosses the bedroom and goes out the door. He pads barefoot out onto the landing and down the stairs, the folds of thin silk fluttering around his ankles. It's only when he hears the sound of voices from the veranda that he bothers gathering the two ends of the tie together and folding the garment around him.

Dom goes through to the smaller sitting-room. There's a photograph album lying open on the low table in front of the couch. Dom glances down and smiles in recognition. He's spent hours poring over these pictures of Ian, thirty seven years old with a shock of wavy dark hair and ridiculously dramatic cheekbones, dressed in cloth-of-gold and crowned with a wreath of gilded vine leaves. There's a clear plastic pouch taped to the uppermost album page to hold a stamped gold-tone coin bearing Ian's profile and the legend 'Rex, 1976'.

Dom crosses to the open French doors and steps out onto the weathered wooden deck of the veranda.

Ian, leaning against the rail in the shade of the trailing and overgrown honeysuckle hanging from the upstairs porches, flashes him a smile of warning. The woman sitting in one of the large wicker armchairs facing Ian turns her head and lifts her eyebrows in polite interest.

"Cate, allow me to present my young friend, Mister Dominic Monaghan," Ian says.

Dom obediently comes forward, his bare feet silent on the peeling painting boards.

"Dominic, this is Miss Cate Blanchett, of New York City."

"Mister Monaghan," Cate murmurs.

"Miss Cate," Dom says pleasantly, taking her hand briefly and feeling her strong cool fingers flex against his.

"Dominic, dear heart, perhaps you'd bring some fresh ice," Ian says, tipping his chin to indicate the sweating glass jug of lemonade sitting on the silver tray on the white wicker side table.

Dom, who knows a dismissal when he hears one, nods and smiles crookedly.

"Sure."

He takes the jug up, his hands slipping a little on the wet surface, and goes down the veranda towards the kitchens.

"So, how much money are we talking about?" Ian says.

Dom blinks and ducks his head, wishing he had some voluntary control over his acute hearing.

"One million dollars down payment, the other four million to be paid within a year. Is that enough to persuade you to say yes?"

Cut.


	6. The Queen of the Night.

Cate sets her attaché case down on the plate glass expanse of her desk and unbuttons her jacket.

"Hey. Good trip?" Karl asks, sauntering across the acreage of pale carpet to a leather armchair.

"Very. What did I miss?"

"We got an answer on the buy-out."

"Well, I can tell by your expression that it's not a 'yes'."

"They made a counter-offer. It was essentially 'fuck you' with a lot of zeros attached."

Cate laughs and comes around her desk. Karl folds his long limbs into the chair.

"Don't worry about it," Cate says. "We'll make the same offer again after Mardi Gras and they'll beg to take my money."

She palms the sides of her narrow skirt up over her thighs. Karl sinks his teeth into his lower lip.

"They'll beg to _give_ me their stupid company," Cate murmurs, putting one knee into the leather upholstery on each side of Karl's hips.

Karl growls low in his chest and slides his palms up the silky backs of Cate's thighs.

"Face it, they'll beg to give me their balls," Cate says, curling forward to cover Karl's open mouth with hers.

Their tongues circle slowly and carefully; their lips part and Cate looks into Karl's snapping eyes.

"No one's going to be able to refuse me anything," she says.

"Oh good," Karl smiles. "I'm tired of it being just me."

"Men," Cate says, her fingertips describing shivering arabesques on the smooth golden skin of Karl's jaw and throat. "You all give it away so easily." Her hand slips down the cool surface of his tie to his belt buckle. "It takes a woman to know how to get something - " her fingers splay over the fine wool of his suit pants and the hard curve of his cock " – and hold _onto_ it."

Karl gasps in pleasure as Cate squeezes sweetly.

Cut.

A black sky hangs over a black sea, and a thin silent storm shakes the stars. Somewhere something screams. Viggo walks barefoot on a shore of black glass, his passing marked in footprints of fresh blood. The crow flaps brokenly on the ground, its feathers spattered with its own guts.

Viggo peers into the dark. He glances down, unfurling his blood-smeared fist. The piece of paper he's holding uncrinkles a little, its pink margins ruffling in the wind. The glossy picture is streaked with oil stains, but the cheerful font's still readable: _hunky Orlando Bloom shows his style at Hollywood's_ –

Viggo hears a slow, rolling roar like the sound of an inferno, and feels a prickle of heat on the back of his neck. He turns.

The darkness streams into and out of a chasm of light. Ribbons of brightness twist into the black, even as the black weaves into the white. Viggo moves closer, his hair lifting in the photon stream. In the core of the radiance something moves: slender limbs, dark curls, dark eyes.

"What the - ?"

Viggo sways, feeling the current of a hundred thousand thoughts flowing around him. Most of them are just fragments, a heartbeat, a smile, a laugh … but some of them _fuck_ some of them are heart's blood tears a fucking hunger for love and sex and beauty that's so bitter it's exquisite. A hundred thousand pairs of lips shaping his name - _Orlando_ – a hundred thousand pairs of eyes staring at his image and wishing wishing _wishing_. All of that energy – that power – pouring into one man's body, and somehow not tearing it apart. That kid's already an open gate, power flooding into him, through him, out of him, leaving him with nothing more than a megawatt smile.

Viggo feels the loa coiling around him, their claws slitting open his veins, their magic snaking into his flesh.

Viggo laughs.

"Is this my fuckin' crazy idea, or yours?" he asks them.

They answer, convulsing him from head to heels, and when Viggo opens his mouth again his voice is not a human voice.

Orlando comes awake with a gasp, kicking his way free of the sheets twisted around his legs. He sits up, wiping his hair off his face. He fumbles for the light on the bedside table and clicks it on. A soft glow reveals the mundane strangeness of a hotel room with his suitcase spilling its guts onto the floor.

The trill of the bedside phone makes him jump.

"Bloody fuck!"

He half-knocks the receiver off the base and gets it to his ear.

"Hello?"

"This is your five forty-five wakeup call."

"Oh. Yeah. Thank you," Orlando tells the recording.

Cut.

Dom, wearing a pair of jeans and one of Ian's Egyptian cotton shirts, is lying on the bench outside the kitchen door. He's failing to read a tattered paperback copy of _Interview with a Vampire_ when Ian comes sauntering along and stops next to him.

"What's up?" Dom asks, when Ian hasn't moved or spoken after several minutes.

"I wonder if the house wants a commercial-grade brushed steel gourmet kitchen," Ian says. "I'm not sure I do."

Dom tosses his book and sits up, frowning in confusion.

"Y'what?"

Ian smiles and sits down next to him.

"I'm having some work done around the place. I was just thinking over the merits of restoration versus replacement."

Dom looks at him suspiciously, but then shrugs.

"Yeah, whatever."

Dom leans back, resting his head against the flaking white-painted brickwork, and curls his bare toes on the worn wooden boards of the porch flooring. He can feel Ian's gaze, but he waits for him to say what's on his mind.

"You should go home, Dominic."

"Not a chance," Dom answers, rolling his head to look at Ian. "When I took the filter out of the coffee maker this morning? Bloody thing fell apart, and the grounds didn't just go all over the counter, I'd left the lid up on the jug, and they went in there too and ruined the coffee. My luck's still shite. If I leave you and go back to New Orleans, I'll be struck by lightening or … something."

"I didn't mean New Orleans."

"You mean _Manchester_?" Dom says in disbelief. "Have you ever been to Manchester?"

"Certainly not," Ian shudders. "We had the house in London, and my father's estates in Scotland – which mother, being a Southern belle, hated for no other reason than it was north of everywhere else."

"Yeah, well, believe me, she'd have found plenty of other reasons to hate Manchester. What the hell's this about, anyway?"

"All right, so Manchester's out," Ian says. "There's a whole world that isn't Manchester and isn't within a hundred miles of New Orleans. This thing with your luck, it didn't start until you came here, and chances are if you leave it'll stop again."

"I don't want it to stop," Dom protests. "I mean, yeah, it's fucking shite when it breaks, though it's not really all that bad as long as I stick close to you. But when it's up – Jesus, I can't lose. I make more in a week playing cards or rolling dice than my dad does in a month working a real job. Why would I want that to stop?"

"I moved back here for the weather, you know," Ian says, ignoring Dom's scowl of confusion. "I mean, there I was, faced with the choice of two moldering ancestral homes, both with crippling death taxes and bad plumbing. I thought, at least if I go to my mother's house I won't have to worry about the heating bills."

Dom waits, and eventually Ian's thin blue gaze sweeps over him and locks with Dom's solemn gray stare.

"I cashed in, Dominic. That little something I've been keeping back, that souvenir of my glory days? I sold it, for every penny it's worth."

Dom rocks forward, his eyes sliding away from Ian's.

"That – Miss Blanchett, right? What does she – what - ?"

"I don't entirely know, and the price was high enough that I don't entirely care," Ian says. "But the important thing as far as you're concerned is that, at midnight on Mardi Gras, all I'll have left is a lot of money, good looks, a fine pedigree, and a beautifully maintained home. You're always welcome here, Dominic, but I won't be able to protect you anymore."

Dom stands, and walks blindly to the railing. His fingers curl on the satin-smooth wood, and he stares unseeing at the tangle of overgrown honeysuckle hanging down from the porch roof.

"When your luck breaks again after that, you need to leave Louisiana altogether," Ian says quietly.

Cut.

Elijah runs full-tilt down the street, a half-scrunched newspaper flapping and fluttering in his hand. He rounds the corner onto Saint Philip, skitters to a stop and shoulders the door open, then breaks into a run again down the carriageway and up the stairs, along the hallway, and up the next two flights of stairs. He scoops the key out of its hiding place under the carpet and unlocks the door, and toes the key back into place, slams through the door, and pounds up the last set of stairs into Viggo's living room.

"You fucking did this. You're fucking insane!"

Viggo, sitting on the floor and using his fingers to smear something black and sticky onto the canvas propped up against the table legs, smiles crookedly.

"Hey, Elijah."

"You're fucking insane, you're _fucking_ insane," Elijah laughs, skipping and spinning, the newspaper beating around him like fragile wings.

Viggo exhales a little snick of amusement and reaches for his cigarettes and lighter on the edge of the table.

"I take it you're pleased."

Elijah drops to his knees beside him.

"You just – king of _fucking_ Mardi Gras, man. I mean, king of a krewe, yeah, he's a movie star, he's Orlando Bloom; he'd be perfect for king of a krewe. But, you made him king of fucking _Mardi Gras_. There's gotta be a dozen businessmen in New Orleans who'd pay you serious shit money for that crown this year, same as every year."

Viggo squints a smile into the ribbon of smoke winding up from his cigarette.

"Fuck'em," he cackles. "Let'em take a year off."

"I can't fucking believe this," Elijah says, rocking back on his heels, his eyes turning wide and soft with anticipation. "I'm gonna fuck the king of Mardi Gras."

"Yeah, about that," Viggo says, his smile sliding away. "You know I just gave you something a fuckload more important than a double dip at some fuckin' movie star, right?"

Elijah's expression sobers, but he doesn't say anything. Viggo looks at him sidelong, then switches his cigarette to his left hand and goes back to thumbing circles in the mess of paint with his right.

"King of Mardi Gras," Viggo says. "That's the biggest fuckin' magic there is. A man who's been king of Mardi Gras … the loa know who he is. They know his fuckin' _name_. And once, just once, he can ask them for whatever the fuck he wants and they _will_ grant it. You get fucked by the king, on the night of Mardi Gras, and you get a tiny piece of his power, and that tiny piece is enough to change you for fuckin' ever."

Viggo leans back, contemplating his handiwork, and nods in satisfaction. He turns his attention more fully to Elijah.

"You never wonder how the fuck a white boy from nowhere in particular became a houdoun?" Viggo asks, wiping his thumb down his forehead and the bridge of his nose, leaving a smear of red-black paint on his skin.

Elijah smiles slyly.

"Yeah," Viggo says. "I got fucked by the king of Mardi Gras, my first fuckin' night in town. I wake up two days later and I can fuckin' _hear_ them, the loa, whispering to each other. They fuckin' hate me, but they can't do anything about it. They have to do business with me whether they like it or fuckin' not. So I'm just saying, don't get fuckin' toppy or any shit like that. You let him do you. And then you have an interesting fuckin' life, Elijah."

"Why would you do this?" Elijah asks. "Why would you just give this away?"

Viggo shrugs.

"Maybe I like what you've done with the little bit of power you've got now. Maybe I wanna see what you'd do if you could do anything. Maybe it's not me at all. Maybe the loa fuckin' _want_ him, just like you and a million other teenie fangirls do."

"You're so fucked up, man," Elijah grins, gathering the newspaper up again and beating out the page enough to read from it. "New Orleans breaks with tradition this year in naming English actor and Hollywood heartthrob Orlando Bloom as Rex, king of Mardi Gras, and New York businesswoman Catherine Blanchett as his queen - "

"Gimme that," Viggo snaps, grabbing the page from Elijah's hand.

"So, like, what? She outbid Liv? Sweet," Elijah says with a laugh.

"Who the fuck – Elijah, leave."

Elijah unfolds onto his feet, his expression suddenly sober.

"Is everything - "

"Go."

"I'm gone."

As Elijah pounds back down the stairs, Viggo passes his paint-sticky fingertips across the printed name.

"Now, who are you, sweetheart? And how did you just fuck me over without me feeling a thing?"

Cut.

"Viggo? Shit. Viggo!"

Viggo comes awake to hands on his naked back, and then Elijah rolls him over on the floor.

"Is that paint in your hair or – no, don't tell me, I don't want to know."

"Petit. Do you know why the king of Mardi Gras is chosen from the most powerful men in New Orleans, and the queen is some debutante with perky tits?" Viggo croaks, as Elijah tries to haul him into a sit.

"It's this thing called the patriarchy," Elijah says, giving up and straddling Viggo's hips instead. "Some women are actually quite irate about it."

"It's because women are a fuckin' dead-end," Viggo says. "Fuckin' power-suckers, leeches, fuckin' vampires. You fill a women up with your spunk – your fuckin' essence, your power – and what do you get back? A fuckin' smile, a sigh, a flutter of their fuckin' eyelashes. Fucking _nothing_."

"Well, personally, I've never filled a woman with anything other than bullshit, so I wouldn't know."

"You open a gate in a man, and he fuckin' spews out power. A woman – they fuckin' clamp down on everything they get an' never let it go. No fuckin' outlet, y'know?"

"No, I don't. You're making no sense here."

"And no outlet means no overspill, and no overspill means no fuckin' magic, and no magic means I'm gonna hafta start shoving white powder up my fuckin' ass for a thrill and that's just not gonna happen, d'accord?"

"Whatever you say, Viggo," Elijah says blithely.

"Fuckin' bon sure. Okay, fuck off, I have work to do. Go play with Dom," Viggo says, shifting under Elijah enough to rock Elijah to one side a little.

"Dom's in Baton Rouge, remember?"

"Not anymore he's not."

Elijah opens his mouth to say something but the trill of the cell phone in his back pocket cuts him off. He snags it out and glances at the caller ID, then hitches his eyebrows at Viggo as he flips the phone open.

"Dom? Hi," he says. "Where are you? Weird. No – no, it's fine, I can be there in about five minutes. Yeah. It's nice that you're back."

Cut.


	7. The Sun God

The weeks leading up to Mardi Gras pass unremarkably. Elijah turns tricks six nights a week in the better bars and clubs, or from his apartment. Dom's around, though if Elijah stopped to think about it (which he doesn't), he'd realize that Dom's visits have decreased from two or three a week to one or two. As it is, Elijah can't remember the last time Dom came by early or late enough to have a chance of catching Elijah off-duty. It's all the same to Elijah, though; a hundred bucks for an hour of grappling with Dom is no hardship. Maybe there are times when Elijah's tempted to tell Dom to keep his money, to ask Dom to touch him in just the right way, suck him, make him come sharp and sweet in Dom's arms. Then again, maybe there aren't. When Dom's left, Elijah strips the brocade cover off the bed and lies down on the sheets. He strokes himself to completion, thinking of nothing or everything or blade-perfect cheekbones and deep brown eyes.

Elijah never knows from day to day whether he'll find Viggo sprawled unconscious in a pool of saltwater or poring over piles of dusty books and pages of calculations.

"Fuckin' loa," Viggo rasps, fumbling a cigarette between his lips while Elijah pours café au lait from a takeout cup to a cracked and stained mug, because Viggo thinks Styrofoam is unhealthy. "That bitch thinks they're the only game in town, but they're not. There's other kinds of magic, Elijah."

"Sure," Elijah says with a shrug, pulling a warm beignet apart in his fingers.

"There's human magic," Viggo goes on, squinting through the smoke at Elijah licking powdered sugar off his own wrist. "It's only a fuckin' spark next to what the loa have, but … a hundred thousand people in the Quarter for Mardi Gras. That's a lotta fuckin' sparks. Give them some tinder, somethin' might catch fire. Might burn."

"Uh huh," Elijah says, stirring the debris of magazine pages and torn rags and spangles on the floor with the toe of his sneaker.

In the final few days before Mardi Gras, Elijah spots Viggo lingering over the merchandise in the stores that sell bright plastic beads and cute voodoo toys to the tourists.

"Personally, I find these scarier than the ones you make," Elijah says, waggling a fetish doll with fluffy pink hair and rolling plastic eyes.

"Me too," Viggo says, putting his hand in his jacket pocket, but not before Elijah's spotted the yellow-ochre oil shining on his fingertips.

"What are you up to?" Elijah grins, glancing around.

"How many of these fuckin' abominations would you say they sell during Mardi Gras?" Viggo asks, ignoring Elijah's question.

"I don't know … but, a lot. Really a lot."

"Good."

Cut.

Tuesday night is the big one. There've been parties every night since the previous Thursday; a couple of the super-krewes paraded on Monday, and a couple more are holding off until Wednesday. But Tuesday night is always the best, with the revelers warmed up but not burnt out. Tuesday is the feast-day that gives its name to a weeklong debauch.

Fat Tuesday. _Mardi Gras_.

Elijah wouldn't normally bother with the Rex ball, since younger hotter guys are to be found partying with the krewes, but this year Orlando's presiding over a general breakdown of traditional strictures. Instead of being crowned at the beginning of the evening and then subjected to a long procession of bowing and curtseying by the upper echelons of Louisiana society, Rex and his Queen are enjoying the semi-select company at the upper table while a motley court eats and drinks and dances with anarchic abandon. The coronation ceremony is scheduled for midnight, though Rex's reign has already begun.

It's almost eleven when Elijah makes his way up the sweeping staircase to the ballroom. Compared to the many guests wearing little more than body paint and spangles, he's positively conservative in black PVC jeans, a bright blue mesh tee shirt, and a black half-mask filigreed with silver glitter. He's enjoying the anonymity of the mask; it gives him the freedom to stare at others without them always staring back. He's still getting plenty of appreciative looks, but they're not the beauty-bewildered gazes that he's accustomed to.

Elijah pauses on the threshold of the ballroom. The hallway outside is brightly lit, but inside the cavernous space is dark, though spangled with points of color and light that swirl across the waving winding limbs of the dancers. The heat and crush of the music are overwhelming. Elijah grins, filling his lungs in preparation for the plunge.

"Hey," someone rasps at Elijah's ear.

Fingers bite into Elijah's shoulder. Elijah glances around –

\- Death grins at him, white skull shining out from the dark of the grave-dirt –

"The fuck," Elijah says sharply, pulling back.

Viggo hisses and Elijah blinks. He looks Viggo up and down, grudgingly appreciating how the skin-tight black catsuit outlines the sparse lines of Viggo's muscles and sinews. The skeleton marked in white on the fabric just emphasizes the clean length of Viggo's own limbs. Viggo's hair is swept back from his forehead, to reveal the skull delineated on his face in white paint and black soot. His lips are striped black and white, to suggest the skull's teeth.

Viggo's eyes are dark neon blue, pupils widened to black abysses.

"Man. You're totally fucked up, aren't you?" Elijah says.

"Come with me," Viggo says breathlessly, grasping Elijah by the wrist and tugging him away from the doorway.

"What? No, fuck off. I'm collecting on that deal we had," Elijah protests as Viggo pulls him along the hallway.

"Yeah, about that," Viggo says, as he shoulders through the door to the men's room.

He shoves Elijah through the doorway between the outer room and the toilet area, then backs him into the door of the nearest cubicle.

"What? Come on, fuck - "

Viggo catches hold of Elijah under the jaw, casting a swift glance around.

"I have something I want you to give to the king of Mardi Gras," Viggo pants harshly.

Elijah instinctively tenses and tries to pull away, but Viggo just shifts his grip, digging his thumb into the angle of Elijah's jaw and forcing his mouth open a bit. Elijah's hands come up to Viggo's chest, trying to push him off, but Viggo's unyielding as stone. Elijah makes a shapeless sound of protest as Viggo leans down and smothers Elijah's open mouth with his own.

Elijah jolts, but Viggo uses his hold on Elijah's jaw to keep him in place. Viggo's tongue snake-slithers between Elijah's teeth, and Elijah squirms. Viggo tastes of earth and smoke and saffron. Elijah slackens, his hands scrabbling weakly at the hard muscles of Viggo's arms. He can feel dark heat tingling liquid-quick through every artery and vein in his body, pooling heavy in his belly and balls. Viggo's hand slides down Elijah's throat, down his narrow chest, and covers the hardening ridge of Elijah's cock through his jeans. The PVC squeaks plaintively as Viggo's fingers flex.

Viggo breaks the connection of their mouths just in time to let Elijah's shaky cry of pleasure escape. Elijah's eyes flutter open, and he gazes up at Viggo in disbelief.

"The fuck, man," he says unsteadily.

Viggo's eyes have lightened to their natural water-blue, and his pupils are back to normal. For a second he just stares narrowly into Elijah's face, then he smiles slightly.

Elijah blinks hard, but it doesn't clear the little spangles of darkness floating in front of Viggo. Elijah lifts his hand off Viggo's arm, intending to rub his eyes, but he's distracted by the amazing feeling of the muscles sliding over the bones in his forearm, and drench of his blood through his veins.

"What the fuck did you just do to me?" he breathes.

"Give it a minute, the tripped-out feeling will pass," Viggo says gently, his hand on Elijah's elbow to steady him.

"Oh shit … that's fucking incredible," Elijah says.

He sways, his head falling up and back, his mouth open and soft. Viggo grins, death's head smile inside the skull's teeth painted on his lips.

"When all this is over, remind me to fuck you _very very hard_ for ever looking like that," Viggo says.

Elijah exhales a laugh, but there's a twist to his lips that's both confused and eager.

A minute passes, Viggo watching patiently while Elijah blinks and shakes his head and frowns.

"Okay. What the fuck was that?" Elijah asks, shrugging Viggo off.

"Nothing. A little irresistibility spell."

"Yeah, sure," Elijah scowls, shouldering past Viggo to the mirror over the sinks. "Like I'd ever fucking need that."

Elijah pushes his mask up off his face and leans forward to peer at himself, turning his face from side to side critically. There's no visible damage, though. If anything he looks even better than usual, his lips and cheeks a little flushed, his eyes brilliantly blue and starred with pure white around his dilated pupils. He looks sexed up, which always suits him.

"Human magic," Viggo murmurs at his ear, leaning over Elijah's shoulder to study him in the mirror too. "No one's gonna fuck up tonight for us. _No one_."

Elijah pulls his mask back into place.

"Well, the next time you wanna shove your tongue into one of my orifices you can pay, just like everybody else," he says. "You're a great guy, Viggo, but you're not my type, so no freebies."

"That reminds me," Viggo says, suddenly grim. "Where's Dom?"

Elijah laughs in surprise.

"Dom always parties with Orpheus Krewe on Mardi Gras night. He's very brand-loyal."

"Commendable," Viggo says, relaxing again.

This time when Elijah reaches the threshold of the ballroom he plunges straight into the crowd, shouldering his way between dancers until he's embedded in the heart of a pulsing perspiring beast with countless limbs and lips and laughing eyes shining from behind masks. Elijah lets the music take him, lifting his arms and leaning back until he feels the heated press of someone's side or spine or something against his back, supporting him, leaning on him, sliding against him.

He hitches with the beat, his hands glancing on skin and satin, other people's fingers brushing over his arms and neck. He turns, chin lifted, and through the dark and glitter his gaze slides to the dais where the royal table is in post-dinner disarray. About half the seats are empty, some guests being on the dance floor and some lounging on the railing separating the dais from the rest of the room. Orlando, his back half-turned, is talking with a small group of people standing at the top of the six steps leading down from the dais. He's wearing a tuxedo suit and a severely plain white shirt, with his curls combed back from his face. Except for his bowtie, which is hanging open, and the two unfastened buttons at the neck of his shirt, he looks remarkably unsullied by the evening's excesses.

Elijah stills, standing his ground against the push of the bodies surrounding him. He lifts both hands to his mask and pushes it up, pushes it off.

Orlando turns, as if answering an audible summons. His dark gaze unerringly sweeps the crowd, until his eyes meet Elijah's. Elijah starts to ease his way through the press of people. Orlando looks back at his companions and makes some parting remark, then comes down the steps and shoulders his way among the dancers. Those who notice him step aside for him, but most of the revelers are too engrossed in their own pleasures to pay attention to their king.

"Hi," Orlando says when he and Elijah meet in the middle of the dance-floor. "I didn't think there'd be anyone I knew here."

Orlando glances aside, and realizes that at least half-a-dozen of their neighbors are watching with interest. Orlando ducks his head and pulls his curls down into his eyes.

"Sorry. That was a bloody stupid thing to say. Do you even remember me?" he asks.

"Yeah, I do," Elijah grins, and Orlando takes spark from that and smiles broadly back at him.

"Okay, well, yeah. I just thought I'd say hi," Orlando says, casting furtive looks around them. "So … hi."

"Take my mask," Elijah says, offering it.

"What?"

"Rex is the only person who doesn't have a mask. Put mine on."

Orlando looks doubtful, but he takes the black and silver half-mask from Elijah's hand and slips the ribbon over his head. He dips his face into his splayed fingers, then looks up again, his dark eyes glittering in the shadowed openings of the mask. Elijah takes hold of him by the wrist, fingers curling under the smooth cotton of his shirt cuff, around skin that's warm and velvet smooth. Elijah draws Orlando with him as he backs through the crowd, the press of people parting and then closing again around them. Just a few feet from where they were, they're safely anonymous. No one's paying attention to them – or at least, no one's paying particular attention to them, though there are plenty of impersonally appreciative glances.

"See?" Elijah says. "Now you're hidden. Now you can do whatever you want, and no one will know it's you."

Orlando laughs.

"You've no idea how long I've waited for someone to tell me that."

"So do it," Elijah challenges.

Orlando tugs his own thin lower lip between his teeth, considering. He reaches out, winding one arm around Elijah's shoulders and drawing him closer. Elijah yields, leaning in to feel Orlando's hardening cock pushing insistently against his belly. Orlando drops his head, his mouth close to Elijah's ear.

"It's like … sometimes I can feel something under my skin," Orlando breathes, the ruffle of air warm and moist on Elijah's skin. "Like I feel everything that everyone else feels. Like I _am_ everyone else. Does that make any sense?"

"No," Elijah says, lifting and dipping his head to rub his cheek against Orlando's chin. "But, fuck, right now I feel it too."

Orlando puts one broad tanned hand on Elijah's glossy hip. Their bodies fall instantly into a common cadence of push and sway that counterpoints the beat of the music thudding through their bones. Elijah grinds himself shamelessly on the hard curve of Orlando's thigh, and Orlando snarls out a cry of pleasure and tugs Elijah's face in close again.

"Shit, that feels fantastic," Orlando says breathlessly.

Elijah nods, both hands fisting in the front of Orlando's unbuttoned tuxedo jacket. Orlando cups his hands under Elijah's jaw and tips Elijah's chin up and Elijah opens his mouth and Orlando's parted lips fit perfectly onto the curves of Elijah's kiss. Their tongues touch and circle, and Elijah feels something dark and shimmering shift inside him, uncoiling, filling his chest and throat and mouth. Orlando moans, the sound swallowed in the music, but Elijah feels it as a vibration on his tongue and under his hands. Orlando staggers a little, breaking the connection between them.

"Christ. What a rush."

" _Fuck_ ," Elijah laughs, tugging Orlando back to him again. "Fuck me. I need you to fuck me."

Orlando's eyes burn black behind his mask.

"Come on," he says, taking Elijah by the hand and pulling him off the dance-floor.

Cut.

Karl, carrying two flutes of champagne, sits down in Orlando's empty chair next to Cate.

"I come bearing tribute," he smiles, passing one of the glasses to Cate. "It's quite a party."

"I'm afraid it's going to fall a little flat soon," Cate says.

Karl shifts his chair a little closer, hooking his wrist around Cate's so their glasses are counterpoised.

"What about him?" he asks, leaning in so that only Cate can hear his soft voice under the music.

"Bloom?"

Cate shakes her head.

"He doesn't matter. The kings of Mardi Gras have always been powerful men, used to wielding authority. The queens – are pretty young girls who know how to smile. The king is the real conduit; you open a gate in a man who's used to ruling, and the power of the loa comes through like a dam breaking."

"And this year?" Karl murmurs, his mouth next to Cate's ear.

"This year … there's a queen who knows how to rule and a king who knows how to smile."

Karl hums, and Cate shivers a little at the sensation buzzing through the sensitive skin of her ear lobe.

"When the flood peaks at midnight," Cate breathes, as Karl's fingers trace the junction between cloth-of-gold and pale shoulder, "I'll be the one who can bear the power, I'll be the one it comes through."

"And the king - "

"Might be able to pull down enough energy to keep this party going, if he's lucky."

Cut.

Jude is dressed in a white linen suit, five-foot long feathered angel's wings, and a silver glitter half-mask. He rather incautiously told Dom what his costume was going to be, and Dom has used the information to make them both more conspicuous by wearing red leather jeans, a tight red tee shirt, and a red half-mask with a devil's slitted eyes and twisted horns.

Jude takes one pill out of Dom's palm and tongues it into his mouth. Dom rolls the other back and forth for a second, in a gesture reminiscent of shaking a die. He flips his hand up to his mouth, but the pill falls between his splayed fingers onto the rim of the bathroom sink. Dom slaps at it, managing to hit it with just the very tips of his fingers and send it flying again. Jude laughs.

The pill rattles into the sink, skittering and rolling down the curved porcelain. Dom curses under his breath but makes another grab at the fugitive. This time he actually captures it between his hand and the side of the basin, but when he slides his hand up to the top of the sink the pill rolls free and falls onto the floor.

"Shite," Dom says fervently and drops to get it again before it rolls out of reach under the pipes.

He goes down too fast, already leaning in to reach for the pill, and cracks his chin hard on the edge of the countertop. He stands up again, reeling a little and clutching at the sink to steady himself. Jude is almost hysterical as Dom lifts his hand to his mouth and touches the tip of his tongue to his fingers and looks to see if he's bleeding.

"You okay?" Jude manages to say through his laughter.

"Yeah," Dom mutters darkly.

"Where's it gone?"

Dom bends over to look. The pill's sitting in a tiny pool of water on the otherwise pristine floor, dissolving drug making streamers of white on the dark stone tile.

"I think I'd start again with another one," Jude says sympathetically.

"I don't have another one; that was my last," Dom says.

They look at each other in silence.

"It's not that big a deal," Jude says at last. "It doesn't even count.

Dom looks away, his fingers against his lips again.

"I think I just knocked a chip outta my fuckin' tooth."

Jude falters back, leaning against the sink, and pushes his mask up into the waves of his tow-blond hair.

"Christ. Dom."

Dom pulls his own mask off and throws it down on the countertop, then rakes both hands through his hair.

"So you're just going?" Jude asks.

Dom's face twists, an attempt at a smile that he just can't pull off. He extends his right hand.

"Jude, man, it's been a privilege."

For a second Jude won't respond, but then he steps forward and puts his arms around Dom, and Dom just hangs on. At last Dom struggles out of Jude's embrace, batting at him and laughing despite the shine in his eyes.

"Get your shaggin' feathers outta my mouth."

"Call me when you get wherever you decide to go," Jude says. "I swear, I get so sick of this bloody town. It'd be nice to have a reason to visit somewhere else."

Dom nods, but he's afraid to test his ability to speak.

Cut.

Orlando leads Elijah out of the ballroom through the door behind the dais, then down a curving hallway, through a pair of curtained French doors, and across an acreage of plush carpet. A tuxedoed security guard steps forward to intercept them, but Orlando pulls his mask off and smiles.

"It's me."

The other man nods and steps back. Orlando pulls Elijah through another door into a gleaming reflective space. There's a dizzy second when Elijah can't understand how he can be simultaneously looking into Orlando's eyes and at the line of Orlando's profile and the way Orlando's hair curls on the back of his shirt collar. Then the room stutters into focus and Elijah realizes that three of the four walls are mirrored from floor to ceiling. Fuck. The ceiling is mirrored too.

There's a violently luscious red velvet sofa in one corner, and a couple of black leather armchairs in the other, and through the half-open door on the other side of the room Elijah gets a glimpse of a black marble and smoked mirror bathroom.

Orlando shrugs his jacket off, and Elijah sees the curl of his thin lips and the hollow under his cheekbone and the flex of his shoulder blades under the thin cloth of his shirt. Elijah runs his hands up Orlando's spine, and looks at his own blue eyes around Orlando's shoulder, and his own small hands on Orlando's back.

"This is awesome," Elijah says with a grin, and turns sharply around in Orlando's arms so that he's pressed back against Orlando from shoulders to knees.

"You're so hot," Orlando murmurs, and Elijah lets his head tip to one to expose the side of his throat to Orlando's softly tugging kisses.

Elijah stares into the mirror, devouring the sight of himself – all dark hair and white skin and eyes like burnt-out stars – with Orlando fucking Bloom standing behind him, mouthing at his throat and running his big tanned hands up and down Elijah's chest and stomach.

"I want you to fuck me," Elijah breathes. "I want to see you fuck me."

Orlando lifts his head, his dark eyes meeting Elijah's gaze in the mirror. Orlando smiles, a tiny tensing at the corners of his mouth. His hands circle intently on Elijah's hips, then flex down between Elijah's legs.

"You're beautiful," Orlando says to Elijah's reflection.

"So are you."

Orlando smiles a little wider, but his eyes are limpid and absolutely still, as if Elijah's words were meant for someone else. Orlando keeps his gaze on Elijah's reflection as he reaches around Elijah's waist and thumbs open the button on his jeans. Then, abruptly, he hides his face against Elijah's shoulder and groans.

"Fuck. No lube."

Elijah shrugs him off, grinning, and bends from the hips to shove his fingers into the top of his right boot. He pushes back against Orlando teasingly, the stretched-tight PVC across his ass dragging with a tiny hiss on the fine wool of Orlando's pants, over the rock-hard bulge of Orlando's erection.

"It's the boy scout motto," Elijah beams, straightening up and flourishing a three-strip of packets.

"Be prepared?"

"Carry lube."

Elijah rips one packet off with his teeth and chucks the other two in the general direction of the couch. He passes the saved packet back over his shoulder to Orlando, who pays for it with a long, lingering kiss on the nape of Elijah's neck.

Elijah sighs out a blissful smile, tugging his lower lip between his teeth and letting his eyes slide half-closed as Orlando breathes kisses against Elijah's ear and squeezes Elijah's cock gently in his broad palm. Elijah arches, letting his head drop back against Orlando's shoulder and pushing his hips forwards against Orlando's hand.

Orlando's fingers trail back to Elijah's waist, snagging the pull of his zipper and peeling it down slowly. Then Orlando's hand works gently down between the folds of glossy black plastic and Elijah quivers out a sigh and sinks his teeth into his lip as his feels warm, rough fingers closing around his cock.

" _Shit_."

"Yeah, I know. Me too."

Orlando releases him again, and Elijah palms the hips of his jeans impatiently, pushing them down around his hips, down onto his thighs. Orlando tears across the lube packet he's holding and lets the first spill of pearly liquid run out onto the index and middle fingers of his right hand. He thumbs the liquid around, all the time rubbing his lips against the silky skin of Elijah's neck and ear. Elijah breathes harshly, mouth open, eyes fever-heavy. He reaches back and up, cradling Orlando's jaw in one small hand. Orlando's fingers trail hotly up the back of Elijah's thigh and into the crease of his ass, wriggling a little, then

 _in_

and Elijah stutters out a breathless cry of pleasure and Orlando has to tighten his left arm around Elijah's waist to support him.

"Oh God, so good, so fucking good," Elijah gasps, and Orlando inhales sharply too.

"God, that feels amazing," Orlando says, screwing his fingers deeper into the red-hot vise of Elijah's body.

"I know," Elijah cries, his eyes flying wide at the raw intensity of the pleasure shuddering along his nerves.

He clutches at Orlando, fingers tightening in the curls clustered at the side of Orlando's neck.

"I can't wait, I need it now."

Orlando twists his fingers free, making Elijah hiss. Orlando steps back, working his belt open with his right hand while he holds the packet of lube in his left. Elijah heels his boots off and slides his jeans the rest of the way down, stepping out of them to leave himself naked except for the scant coverage of his mesh tee shirt. Orlando backs up another step to the couch, shrugs his open pants down off his hips, and one-handed skims down his thin silk shorts.

"Come on, baby," he murmurs, sitting down on the edge of the red velvet cushions and pushing his shorts and pants further down his thighs.

Elijah turns around, grinning. Orlando smiles back, squeezing the rest of the packet out into his palm and smoothing the liquid over the head of his cock.

Elijah slowly takes the couple of steps needed to bring him right to Orlando. For a moment Elijah just stands over him, his gaze lingering along every perfect line of Orlando's form. Orlando stares up at Elijah, dark eyes shining with delight, and Elijah can feel his admiration like a tangible caress. Elijah sighs, his hands wandering over his own skin as if following the path of Orlando's eyes.

" _Fuck_ ," Orlando says with great conviction. "Come on, baby. Come on."

He leans back among the couch pillows. Elijah smartly turns his back again, his eyes going directly to their reflection. He straddles Orlando's thighs and reaches back and down, beneath himself, and takes hold of Orlando's cock. Orlando makes a shocked breathy sound and promptly sits up straight again, both hands holding Elijah's hips, and gazes past Elijah to the mirror.

Elijah guides the head of Orlando's cock to his hole and presses back and down into Orlando's lap, gasping in a shaky breath at the first burningly intense stretch.

"Oh fuck that's fantastic," Orlando says, his fingers tightening down on Elijah's hipbones.

Elijah makes a small uncertain sound, but keeps pressing down. Orlando's cock goes in inch by wracking inch. Elijah grips his own cock, fisting the shaft slowly and tightly, letting the waves of pleasure ease him past the pain of his impatient mounting.

Orlando takes one hand off Elijah's hip and retrieves the two-strip of lube packets from between the couch cushions and rips them apart, then rips one open. He dumps the contents into his palm and reaches around Elijah, nudging Elijah's hand away with his wrist and replacing it with his own.

"Oh, yeah, nice," Elijah says, letting his head fall back and turning his face against Orlando's neck.

"Yeah, y'like that?" Orlando smiles, his fingers moving smoothly up and down and around.

Orlando's eyes flutter almost closed as his hips begin to shift under Elijah in the same slow sweet tempo.

"Yeah," Elijah whispers.

He braces his bare toes against the moss-thick carpet underfoot and eases his bodyweight up out of Orlando's lap a little, then slackens down again. Orlando's cock drives into his ass hard enough to send sparks shimmering up Elijah's spine.

"Fuck."

" _Jesus_."

"Do it again."

Elijah's hand fumbles for purchase, and Orlando reaches for it, their fingers weaving together and palms braced against each other. They get a new, more jarring rhythm going between them.

"Oh God," Elijah says, his spine arching as he grinds himself down on Orlando's cock.

Orlando untangles his fingers from Elijah's and leans back just enough to give himself room to pull open the buttons down the front of his shirt, pushing the fine fabric out of the way and then pressing the hot bare skin of his chest against Elijah's spine.

"Oh, fuck, yeah, _skin_ ," Elijah purrs, his hips carving slow circles against Orlando's body.

Elijah catches hold of Orlando's right wrist.

"Not yet," he warns, and Orlando's hand stills on his cock, though his hips keep working under Elijah.

"Oh, _yeah_ ," Elijah says exultantly, feeling the heat and pressure still building inside him with nothing more than the slide and stutter of Orlando's cock in his ass.

Elijah lifts Orlando's hand to his mouth, licking up sugary lube from along the creases of his palm and teasing his tongue under the edge of Orlando's shirt cuff.

"Skin," Elijah says again, tugging open Orlando's cuff buttons and exposing the bruise-blue tracery of veins inside his wrist.

Orlando gasps as Elijah sinks his teeth softly into the heel of Orlando's hand. Elijah pushes Orlando's sleeve higher, and bites a gentle path upwards. White cotton rucks aside and uncovers the black tracery of Elvish script tattooed inside Orlando's forearm. Elijah bites down more firmly, and Orlando cries out and his hips jerk hard enough to drive a muffled sound from Elijah too.

"Oh, fuck, _God_ that's so good," Orlando winces, his left hand tight on Elijah's hip and his gaze riveted to the reflection of Elijah lavishing bites and kisses on his arm.

Elijah lifts his head, eyes drowning dark and lips flushed deep red. Orlando's forearm tingles, the skin prickled blood-rose all around his tattoo.

"Now," Elijah says hoarsely, guiding Orlando's hand back to his cock. "Now."

"Show me how, show me what you need," Orlando says, his mouth soft and hot on Elijah's cheek.

"Light, and fast, right here," Elijah says breathlessly, shaping Orlando's fingers over the taut head of his cock.

"Like this?"

Elijah inhales sharply.

"Yeah – oh – even lighter."

Orlando has it, or something pretty damn close to it, and Elijah has to fight to stop himself squeezing his eyes shut as waves of red-hot pleasure wash through him, each adding more fuel to the furnace in his guts. Elijah reaches back and digs his fingers into Orlando's thighs, trying to steady himself against the increasing brutal punch of Orlando's hips under him, and stares at their reflection, at the writhing sweating thing they are.

Orlando wraps his left arm around Elijah, hooking his hand over Elijah's left shoulder and pulling him down even harder onto Orlando's cock. Elijah cries out shakily, trapped between Orlando's hands and hips, and he feels the first stuttering of his orgasm.

"Oh God I'm fucking – I'm fucking coming," he gasps, arching back against Orlando and staring wide-eyed at himself in the mirror as the white ribbon of his come runs over Orlando's tanned fingers and Orlando closes his eyes and buries his face in Elijah's shoulder and Elijah feels him pulsing inside.

"Oh yes yes yes," Orlando whispers, and Elijah turns his head and Orlando lifts his face and looks directly at Elijah, his eyelids flickering insect-wing fast and his breath quivering between his parted lips as he comes in a series of shaking spasms.

Elijah stares, wide-eyed.

"Wow," he breathes.

Orlando, gasping for breath and tossing his head to throw the sweat-damp curls of his hair off his forehead, lifts an eyebrow questioningly.

"You're just … fucking gorgeous," Elijah says, breaking into a grin.

Orlando laughs, and wrestles Elijah around in his lap enough to bring their mouths together in a slippery, overheated kiss.

"Nuh uh, don't get spunk on your suit pants," Elijah says, as Orlando tries to tip them both full-length on the cushions.

"Bugger, yeah."

Elijah untangles himself from Orlando and heads for the bathroom, snagging up his jeans as he passes them.

"Hang on, I'll bring a towel."

Elijah comes back, barefoot but back in his jeans, with a plush white hand-towel. Orlando does a reasonable clean-up on himself and starts pulling his clothes back together. Elijah puts his boots back on, tucking the unused packet of lube back into the right one.

"Shit, I better go get crowned," Orlando says, glancing at his watch to see that it's only ten minutes shy of midnight. "Look, that was fantastic. Do I … em, I mean, how much do I like, owe you?"

"I don't work on Mardi Gras," Elijah smiles, tugging Orlando in by his belt loop. "That was for fun, not profit."

Orlando blushes, his cheekbones burning rose-red, and he ducks his head and Elijah has to laughingly lift his chin enough to take another lingering kiss.

"I really have to go," Orlando says piteously.

"I know. Listen, man, the next time you're in town, you know, drop by."

"I will, I really will," Orlando says.

"Go on. Get outta here. Go get crowned," Elijah grins, pushing Orlando off.

"I'm gone. I'm going," Orlando laughs, and he gets all the way to the door before he springs back and steals one more kiss and then he really does go and Elijah's left grinning like a loon at the door closing behind him.

Cut.

It's five minutes to midnight when Dom, back in jeans and a washed-out chambray shirt hanging open over a tee shirt, comes out of the house on Esplanade carrying a sports bag. He opens the trunk of his car and chucks the bag in next to the suitcase that's been packed and waiting to go ever since he got back from Baton Rouge a couple of months ago. He slams the trunk shut and goes round to the driver's door. A couple of cardboard boxes of his less-easily-replaceable possessions sit in the backseat.

The whine and crack of a firework exploding just a few blocks to the west makes Dom look up, the key already in the door lock. The sky is tinged orange, with every light in the Quarter burning. A group of masked and diaphanously costumed revelers pass in the street, laughing and singing and staggering with their arms around each other.

Dom wrenches the car door open and gets in. He pulls the door shut and flips the rear-view mirror into position. He shoves the key into the ignition. He blinks hard, and glances unseeing at the face of his thick gold watch.

"Fuck!"

He slams the heel of his right hand against the steering wheel, the dart of pain through the tendons of his wrist a welcome distraction from the slow agony building in his chest.

"You couldn't fucking let me have tonight, could you?" he says aloud. "You couldn't let me have one last fucking Mardi Gras, could you?"

Dom wipes the back of his hand across his eyes and snuffles hard, then turns the key in the ignition and flips the car lights on. He's got a car full of expensive stuff, a wallet full of platinum credit cards with nothing on them, and a few thousand dollars in cash. It's way more than he had when he got to New Orleans six years ago, even when offset against the feeling of a gaping fucking hole in his chest.

Cut.


	8. Turning the World, and the Epilogue.

It takes Orlando only a minute or two to make his way back to the ballroom. That's long enough for him to realize that something is wrong.

His body feels wonderful. His lips and fingertips tingle with the taste and feel of Elijah; his groin thrums with the after-weight of his orgasm. He wants nothing more than to get this coronation thing over, so he can fall into a cool bed and dream of a beautiful boy with blue eyes.

He feels as if his skin has become exquisitely sensitive to the shift of his clothes on his body. The sensation rapidly intensifies, until it feels like the breathless beating of butterfly wings inside his flesh.

Orlando takes a deep breath, his dark brows gathering in a frown. Someone asks him if he's all right as he shoulders his way back to the upper table.

"Yes, yeah, thanks," he answers at random, but the truth is he can hardly find his way now through the streams of – what – darkness? cold? _want_ that he can feel swirling around him.

He turns, catching hold of the dais rail to steady himself as he squints at the seething mass of dancers just below him.

 _Fuck_. Music. Not drums or guitars, but the pounding of hearts and the rushing of blood. Orlando's suddenly blind to the sparkles and strobe lights; his gaze is caught by the sheen of an eye, the glint of teeth between curled lips, the shine of sweat on bare skin. He takes another deep breath, and his senses swirl at the sudden lung-deep hit of warmth and woman and man. He can taste the salt of skin and the burnt sugar of rum on his tongue. He flexes his hands and feels the slide of muscles over bones, the compression of blood in his fingertips, the very ridges of his fingerprints as they leave their design on the polished metal under his hands.

"Your Majesty," someone says at Orlando's shoulder, and he turns again, feeling the dizzying drag and then rush of his blood in his veins as he shifts.

Cut.

"It's coming," Cate whispers, her eyes widening.

Karl pulls back a little, staring at her. Cate turns to look at him, but she can hardly see him through the streaming ribbons of light coiling around her.

"I feel it," she says shakily, "inside … something bright and hot and … "

"Your Majesty," the masked usher says, bowing a little as he stops next to Cate's seat. "It's time for the coronation ceremony."

Cut.

It's five minutes to midnight when Dom, conspicuous in street clothes and unmasked, shoulders his way through the throng of painted and spangled guests going up and down the sweeping staircase of the auditorium. Dom looks around frantically, every glimpse of a dark head or small frame making his heart leap and then plunge again when it's not the right one.

Dom works his way almost to the top of the stairs when a cheer goes up in the ballroom, and the crowd in the hallway and all down the staircase take up the cry,

"Long live the king!"

Dom sags back against the banister rail, letting the crowd push past him as they please. Midnight … and he's still in New Orleans. This is defiance his fate won't overlook.

Dom closes his eyes, letting the clamor of the crowd wash over him for a moment. Someone nudges past him, rocking him a little against his grip on the wrought iron railing.

 _Time to go,_ Dom tells himself. _Past time to go._

He opens his eyes again, and his gaze falls without effort on a dark-headed figure already half a dozen steps below him, wearing a black half-mask, a blue mesh tee shirt and a pair of glossy black PVC jeans.

"Elijah," Dom says with complete certainty, but the name is swallowed up by the noise of the crowd.

Elijah keeps walking down the stairs.

"Elijah!" Dom shouts, thrusting himself into the stream again and pushing his way after him. " _Elijah_!"

Elijah hears that, as does everyone else, and he stops, grabbing hold of the railing to avoid being carried any further down by the press of people around him.

"Dom," Elijah beams, pushing his mask up into his hair. "The fuck, man? I thought you were - "

He breaks off, frowning as he surveys Dom's clothes.

"What the fuck's with you?" he asks, as Dom finally gets within reach of him and they ease closer to the banister railing to avoid the crowd's jostling. "What are you doing here?"

"I just – I - I needed to say goodbye to you," Dom says in a rush.

"What?"

"I have to leave New Orleans."

" _Now_?"

"Yes. Now," Dom says, and he can feel the raw edges of the word tearing at his throat and mouth.

"That _sucks_ ," Elijah says.

Dom laughs, a horribly short and painful sound.

"Yeah, doesn't it?"

Elijah smiles sympathetically and tugs on Dom's shirtsleeve.

"Well, look, call me when you get back, okay?"

Dom breathes in very slowly.

"I … I'm not coming back," he says.

Elijah's smile slides away, and his eyes flicker.

"What?"

"I'm not coming back."

Elijah blinks. Dom's gaze drops away from Elijah's face, to where Elijah's small fingers are still resting feather light on Dom's cuff. Dom shrugs, looking away at nothing in particular, and he shifts his weight away from Elijah and –

"Then don't go," Elijah says harshly, his fingers suddenly biting down tight on Dom's wrist.

Dom looks at him again, and for a second he's almost blinded by the brilliance of Elijah's eyes, burning blue.

"Elijah. I have to, if I don't - "

"I don't _care_ ," Elijah snaps. "Don't go."

Dom stares at him, mouth open but no words coming.

"Don't leave me," Elijah says, less imperiously.

Dom turns his hand under Elijah's so that their palms come together and their fingers weave up tight into a double fist.

"I wanna go home," Elijah says at last, pushing his mask right off with his free hand.

Dom nods and turns away, stepping down and down around the turn of the staircase, with Elijah's hand still tight in his and Elijah following the path Dom's carving through the press of people.

Cut.

The instant they put the crown on Orlando's head, he feels something inside him shatter. Time collapses in on itself. The broadside slam of a wave, punching him through a wall of salt water, and the kick and twist of his board as it was swept out from under his feet. The sweet black smell of wet earth in the gray dawn, and Gwyneth laughing at her yellow Wellington boots protruding from under her shimmering elf-queen's robes.

Orlando can feel the rush open and the slam shut of his heart in his chest, and the gush of his blood through the chasms of his veins.

The firefly sparkle of a thousand cameras on a nighttime street, the white-flower flash of a studio photograph, the silver-burn of a reflector panel throwing the already glaring sunlight back into his face. His own eyes stare back at him from marquee posters and magazine covers and bloody billboards.

 _Let it go_ , he tells himself reflexively. _Just let it go, it's nothing, it doesn't mean anything._

Except that it does. Whatever it was inside him that allowed him to let the world flow harmlessly through him is slamming shut, and already he can feel the eddies swirling inside.

 _It bloody well does mean something. They don't feel like this about Tobey, fuck, they don't feel like this about Stuart. It's my name they yell, even when the three of us are together. It's not nothing – it's love – crazy fucked up love but it's love. It's what humans feel, it's what humans want, it's the only thing we really give a flying fuck about._

Orlando stands, extending his left hand palm down toward Cate, who sets her right hand on top of it, inclining her head in graceful acknowledgement as he leads her forward to accept the homage of their subjects.

Cate's skin is inscribed with words of flame, and Orlando can see and feel and hear the rush of her breath between her parted lips. She turns her head towards him, and her eyes are alight from within. She gasps, her body pulling taut under the exquisite pain of the loas' possession.

Cut.

It's Dom who unlocks the door to Elijah's apartment and turns on the lamp, and then closes the door again when Elijah's followed him in and is standing lost in the middle of his own sitting room.

"Do you - " Dom starts.

Elijah turns to him, already stripping his mesh tee shirt off over his head. He throws it aside and comes to Dom, winding his arms around Dom's neck and pushing his hips against Dom's.

"Please."

"Oh God," Dom whispers, but his hands are already cradling Elijah's jaw and tilting his face up so that Dom can sink his lips against Elijah's.

Their kiss is deep and studied, as if they are learning for the first time the way their mouths fit together. Dom's hands slide down Elijah's throat, down his narrow chest, to the waist of his jeans. Elijah pushes Dom's shirt off his shoulders, and Dom manages to alternate undoing Elijah's fly with pulling his hands out of his shirtsleeves as Elijah strips the garment off him completely.

Elijah palms both hands up under the hem of Dom's tee shirt, fingers splaying greedily over smooth skin and dense muscle. Dom reluctantly shifts back enough to pull his tee shirt off. Elijah takes hold of Dom by the belt-loop of his jeans to steady himself while he heels his boots off.

They come back together with a soft little snarl of mutual satisfaction, Elijah clawing gently at Dom's chest and shoulders while Dom wraps an arm around Elijah's waist and pulls him in for another sweet sipping kiss.

Elijah fumbles with the buttons on Dom's denims, his concentration not at all aided by the slow sleek of Dom's hand on Elijah's behind through the shiny plastic of his jeans. Elijah manages to get the top couple of buttons undone and then takes advantage of how worn and loose the denims are to just tug them down over the naked skin of Dom's hipbones.

The first touch of Elijah's hand on Dom's cock makes Dom moan into Elijah's mouth. Elijah pulls back just enough to breathe words against Dom's lips.

"I want you inside me."

Dom shivers, squeezing his eyes shut for an instant. Then he opens them again, puts Elijah gently off with both hands and ducks for a minute to yank open his bootlaces. He straightens again, kicks his boots off, then strips his socks and denims off too. When he's done, he stands naked before Elijah, smiling a little uncertainly.

Elijah smiles back with more conviction, sliding his jeans slowly down his thighs and stepping out of them. He tosses them out of the way and steps close to Dom, his hand making soft passes over Dom's belly and hips and the heavy hard shaft of Dom's cock.

"Inside me."

Cut.

Viggo feels the shift of energy in the ballroom, the frenetic laughter and playful sensuality giving way to something darker and more engrossed. He steps back from the edge of the crowd, skirting the couples lavishing increasingly intense embraces on each other. He's made it almost to the doorway when he feels the wave hit, warmth and want so rich that it staggers him.

"Oh _fuck_ ," he gasps, falling to his knees as every muscle in his body melts.

He looks down at his hands and sees the tracery of arteries and veins mapped in pulsing light, feels the tide of life beating thick under his skin.

"No, not me. I didn't fuckin' include _me_. I belong to the loa!"

But the sweet slow wash of pleasure through his body tells him that no matter who he belongs to, he's still made of earth and ocean like every other human being.

Cut.

Orlando closes his eyes and presses his lips tightly together, trying desperately to contain whatever it is that's filling him

pressing down into his groin and driving the pulse pounding in his cock

pushing up into his chest until he can't breathe

swelling in his throat and into his mouth, the taste bitter as the sea and darker than clay.

"Rex," the crowd calls, "Rex, _Rex_."

Cut.

Dom falls back onto the brocade bed covers, Elijah straddling his thighs and bending to cover him with kisses from his eyelids to lips to throat. Dom's fingers splay on the rich fabric beneath him, and he frowns even as he gasps in pleasure when Elijah's tongue circles around one nipple.

"Elijah. Is this - ?"

"Shh," Elijah smiles, shifting back up to lean his face over Dom's. "It's us. You can go anywhere you want, Dom, and do anything you like, but you always have to come back to me. You're mine."

Elijah shifts again, his mouth fastening on the tender skin under the angle of Dom's jaw and Dom writhes under him, eyes fluttering closed and mouth breaking on a softly pained cry of pleasure. Elijah runs his hands down Dom's arms until their fingers weave together and clasp tight. Elijah lifts his head and arches his spine, nudging his ass against Dom's cock. Dom tries to untangle his right hand from under Elijah's left, but Elijah just exhales a breathy laugh and pins him down more forcefully.

"I need to - "

"No, I've got it," Elijah says slyly.

He arches again, opening his thighs wide and playing the angle just a little, tipping his hips down and then up. His body is still slick and yielding from Orlando, and Dom's cock is rock hard. Elijah gets the angle just so and everything slips and Dom gasps and Elijah pushes down and they fit together in a landslide rush of sensation.

"Fucking God," Dom says and Elijah laughs shakily in agreement.

Elijah rests for just a moment, then the muscles of his thighs tense as they take his weight and he pulls slowly up along the length of Dom's cock. Both men inhale at the same time, awed and aghast at the flame-flicker of pleasure trapped between them. Pause. Elijah presses down again. His eyelids flutter almost closed, and Dom makes a small fractured sound.

Again, the bow-sprung lift and the gentle return, and this time Dom pushes up to meet him. The soft jar of their bodies against each other sends a little shock of pleasure through Elijah's bones, and he throws his head back and gasps in delight.

Dom twists his right hand out from under Elijah's no-longer-attentive hold, and wraps his fingers around the shaft of Elijah's cock. Elijah takes him by the wrist, pulling Dom's hand away again.

"Not yet," Elijah says, his voice catching a little as they rock together again, this time with greater vehemence.

Dom's hips still under Elijah.

"If this is just – Elijah. If I'm buying this, I don't want it."

Elijah bends forward, draping himself over Dom's naked chest.

"I didn't say no. I just said not yet. I want this to last … a long time."

"And then you'll come?"

"And then I'll come," Elijah agrees. "Dom … I'm not taking your money any more. When you fuck me, I wanna let myself come."

Cut.

The problem, Cate realizes, is that the loa don't _want_ to stay inside her. The loa want out. They want to party.

Cate can feel them, razorblades of white light inside her skin. The pain is so perfect, so pure, that it's almost pleasure. Almost. She narrows her eyes, squinting down at her own hand. A crescent of radiance is starting to burn through her skin around each fingernail. If she can't find a way to let them out, they're going to consume her in fire and air.

Cut.

Orlando struggles for breath, but this is worse than being pounded under a rip-tide wave with no sense of up or down only the churning cold and the pressure crushing him down into the dark like a seed thumbed into the black earth and he needs warmth and something to fucking _breathe_.

Cut.

Viggo hopes that if he stays exactly where he is, crouched on the floor of the ballroom with his gaze fixed on the doorway, and concentrates on absolutely nothing except breathing in and then breathing out, he can weather the storm without doing anything he'll regret. He claws his fingers on the slick surface of the floor, digging in.

A pair of bare feet in gold-stranded sandals, and a flurry of pale blue and white chiffon around long slender calves intrude themselves on his field of view, and Viggo moans in despair.

Liv squats down, jade blue eyes vivid in the gold paint covering her face.

"What's the matter? Eat a bad oyster?" she asks snidely.

Cut.

Elijah has both arms lifted above his head, elbows bent and hands on the back of his neck, fingernails dragging slow scratches in his own skin to offset the pleasure churning through him. His head is thrown back, just the slightest sliver of blue showing between his eyelashes and mouth open on a single long, shivering sigh. He rocks and rises, circles and grinds down again, his spine and hips flowing seamlessly from one motion to the other and back again.

Dom's hands are spread over Elijah's chest, smearing up and down with the motion of Elijah's body, fingertips rubbing over hard pink nipples. Dom's biting bruises into his own lip, almost snarling with the delicious agony of maintaining the slow, steady pace of their fucking despite the ferocious tension building in his groin and filling his guts.

Elijah drops one hand from his nape and twists slightly, leaning back and introducing a change of angle to the slide of Dom's cock in his ass. Elijah reaches behind him, his shoulder dropping, and palms Dom's balls. Dom arches, gasping.

"Oh fuck, fuck."

Dom grabs at the pillow behind his head and squeezes until his fingertips are red and white from the pressure.

Elijah smiles and leans forward, letting his fingers slide over and then off Dom's balls. Elijah's hips still on Dom's cock, and for a few seconds they just breath and let the fires bank down a little.

"Dom … can I … "

Elijah folds forward and drops his head on Dom's chest to hide his embarrassment.

"Yes, yes baby, whatever it is, yes," Dom says at once, cupping Elijah's flushed cheek and lifting him up to look Dom in the face. "Anything."

"Can I … be in you?"

Dom inhales, eyes wide.

"God. _Yes_. I just – I thought – you didn't - "

"I don't," Elijah says. "I mean, I never have, but … I want to. With you, I mean."

Dom closes his eyes, and his whole body flexes slowly, feeling the words moving over his skin like tongues of soft fire.

"God. I want that too, so much, Elijah."

Elijah spreads his hands on Dom's chest and pushes himself upright and slowly pulls himself up along Dom's cock and, with a little stutter of sensation that makes Dom quiver, pulls himself free.

Cut.

Cate is burning, and the only cool and kind thing in the whole world is Bloom's hand under hers. She clutches at it, at his wrist, at his body. He's the cold cascade of water over a rocky fall, and the dark earth under the trees at dawn, and Cate just plunges in.

Cut.

"Fucking women," Viggo snarls.

Cut.

For a second Orlando is back at Helm's Deep in the cold and the dark, when the warmth of Stuart's stray breath was like an exhalation from paradise. Stuart never grabbed Orlando with both hands on the nape of his neck and dragged him mouth first into bone-aching heat and never shoved tongue and teeth and _oh God yes_ a lungful of _breath_ into Orlando's mouth.

It's a blind drive towards heat and air that makes Orlando claw both hands up under folds of heavy golden cloth and spread his fingers against Cate's thighs and push her legs apart. She's surrounding him like the sun, her arms around his shoulders and her fingers in his hair. Orlando wrenches his mouth from hers to devour the brilliance off her jaw and throat and the curve of her breast above the drape of her dress.

Cut.

Liv's clawing at Viggo, her nails looking for purchase on the skittery-smooth surface of his catsuit, biting fierce kisses onto his too narrow, too hard mouth. Viggo's doing better, because his broad hands seem just made for gripping and squeezing the white curves of Liv's long thighs and firm behind.

Cut.

Dom is lying on his stomach, leaning up on his elbows but letting his head hang down, his eyes almost closed and his lips parted in anticipation.

"Like this?" Elijah breathes, bowing his head low enough to bring his cheek against the curve of Dom's shoulder.

Elijah's poised on hands and hips between Dom's spread thighs, a few scant inches of quivering air between his belly and Dom's back, with the head of his cock already nursed in the muscular ring of Dom's hole.

"Exactly like that."

Elijah waivers. It's as much the tremble in his arm muscles as anything else that prompts him to ease down, sending his cock stuttering deeper into Dom's body. Dom's head comes up and back, stretching his throat into a tight arch. Elijah groans and shifts, his arms around Dom's body and his fingers closing tight around Dom's forearms. Elijah settles against Dom.

"Is that okay?"

"Oh yeah."

Elijah considers his options, and pushes his hips slowly but inexorably against Dom's behind, forcing his cock even further in until Dom cries out. Elijah covers Dom's hands with his own, their fingers interlocking. Elijah braces himself and pulls back, biting hard on his own lip to ground himself against the shimmer of sensation that the drag of Dom's hole around his cock sends along every nerve. He pauses at the top of his stroke.

"Come on, don't be afraid, you won't hurt me," Dom says, arching up to brush the side of his face against Elijah's, and opening his legs wider.

"I'm afraid of coming. It feels so fucking good."

"It's okay, just take what you need," Dom smiles, dropping his head and rubbing his face on his own arm.

Elijah exhales, rocking into Dom's body again and driving a broken sound of delight out of both of them.

"Oh God, so good," Elijah says, and Dom's agreement is implicit in the way his body flexes to meet Elijah's rise and fall.

Cut.

Orlando thrusts up with his hips, his face contorted with the pleasure-pain of heat returning to frozen fingers and hands. He stabs himself into Cate's burning flesh, his head full of Stuart talking lazy late night nonsense about sex as enactment of killing and dying and feeding.

Cate's mouth is hard against Orlando's. He feels something thick and hot on his tongue, in his throat, and his stomach spasms. The weight in his limbs increases until he feels his heart must stagger to a stop, unable to push his blood through the density of his own flesh. Then, suddenly, the heat in his belly tendrils outwards and he's full of warmth and light.

Cut.

Viggo snarls as he pushes himself into Liv's silky flesh. She hitches against him impatiently, pulling him further in.

Cut.

"Like this," Elijah says breathlessly, guiding Dom over onto his back again.

Dom's hands skim over Elijah's sweat-slick skin, fingertips rediscovering every subtle hollow and high of Elijah's hips and chest and shoulders. Elijah nudges his knees under the backs of Dom's thighs and pushes himself into place again. Dom arches, crying out as Elijah slides home.

Dom draws his knees up to his chest and Elijah curls over him, their bodies pushing hard together. Elijah hisses out his breath, his fingers curving around Dom's hipbones and holding him steady against the slow, emphatic withdraw and then drive of Elijah's cock.

"You're fucking beautiful," Elijah says, pressing down between Dom's thighs until he can drag his lips along the stubble-rough line of Dom's jaw. "So fucking beautiful."

Dom laughs at that, laughing because his heart's fullness demands some kind of relief.

"Can you come like this?" Elijah asks.

Dom makes a tiny stifled sound and reaches down between their slippery bellies, closing his fist around the head of his cock.

"Wait," he murmurs.

Elijah stills, though each pull of his breath continues to work some small magic at the interface between them, sending a delicate trill of pleasure through him. Dom pushes himself back into the bed and flickers his hand quick and light on his cock. His breath roughens, until little stutters of sound break and fall from his lips.

"I can feel you," Elijah says in wonder.

"Yeah, yeah, God yeah. Close."

"Jesus – you're getting really tight."

"Hold me off, Lij. _Hold me off_."

The muscle at the side of Elijah's jaw jumps into hard relief. Elijah grips the root of Dom's cock, fingers tightening down until he's pressing the threatening flutter there into stillness. Dom thrashes, his hand still working fast enough to keep himself suspended in exquisite agony between the urgency of his orgasm and Elijah's restraining hand.

"Come on baby, fuck me, fuck me," Dom pleads. "Come in me."

Cut.

Orlando sinks his teeth into his lip, his body strung tight and screaming as each jab of his hips sends another shock of heat through him until he's burning, incandescent. Energy streams out of his eyes and nostrils and open mouth, through his ears and fingertips and every fucking pore of his skin. Cate's a fire that doesn't consume, and she's flowing into him and through him and out of him and he feels like the sun, like a god. The stutter and spasm of his orgasm is almost an afterthought, a superfluity, in the flood of complete fulfillment that already washes through every particle of him.

Cate feels him coming; her body shudders and refocuses around him, around her own bones and nerves and blood as the loa recede enough for her to feel the living world recoalesce around her. Energy roars into her from the darkness behind her eyes, into the connection of their bodies and through him and out of him. Cate lifts her face from the cool crook of his neck, and she can see the light burning in every pair of eyes and in the palm of every hand. And she can feel it humming in her. Not everything she wanted, but everything she needs … everything she's able to hold.

Cut.

"Forty-three fuckin' years," Viggo says shakily, as he and Liv untangle themselves and sit up on the floor. "You just got something I've been saving for forty-three fucking years."

"You've never fucked a woman?"

"Up until about ten minutes ago, no. I work too fuckin' hard for that juju to just give it away. You realize you can probably rule the fuckin' world now, right?"

"That wasn't bad for a first attempt," Liv says, hooking one long leg over Viggo's lap and scooting closer. "But you need practice."

"Ah … fuck," Viggo growls as he digs both hands into the tangle of her dark hair and tips his mouth onto hers.

Cut.

Elijah lets loose, one hand braced on Dom's hipbone, other hand tight around the root of Dom's cock, and hips describing a merciless thrust and jerk that has him careening towards his own orgasm.

"Dom, Dominic, Dom," he says, the words scorching between his lips and Dom's throat.

Dom's almost sobbing in ecstasy, still playing his fingers quickly on the head of his cock.

Elijah shoves his mouth down onto Dom's as he feels the first warning quiver through his own groin. Elijah wants it to be a kiss, wants to come with his tongue in Dom's mouth. But the quiver becomes a spasm becomes a fucking convulsion of pure fire and bliss. Elijah's breath is torn out of his open mouth in a full-throated cry. He lets go of Dom's cock and Dom arches under him. Elijah feels the pounding of Dom's orgasm rip through them both, semen spattering heavy against Elijah's belly, and it's Dom's turn to just writhe and cry out.

They cling to each other, Elijah still covering Dom with his entire body. Slowly some order of heartbeat and breath emerges out of the chaos. Sleep winds around them both. After some time, Elijah makes the reluctant shift of his hips that pulls his soft cock out of Dom's behind, and Dom makes a blurry noise of complaint.

Dom's flying again, except that this time the engines are silent, and he realizes that he must in fact have reached his destination already. Gradually he becomes aware of the heat that's keeping him almost awake. He remembers that they never put the air-conditioning on when they came back to the apartment, and Elijah's slender body is a furnace. Dom gently untangles them, shifting Elijah to one side and sitting up. Elijah grumbles in his sleep and reaches for Dom's wrist.

"Air-conditioning," Dom says, and Elijah lets him go, still frowning but making a sound of grudging approval.

Dom snicks out a laugh and gets up off the bed. He puts the airflow on medium and walks round the foot of the bed to the half-open doors to the sitting room, wondering where the hell he shed his clothes.

"Dom," Elijah says sharply. "Don't go."

"It's okay," Dom says at once, coming back and leaning down to let Elijah wind his arms around Dom's neck. "I'm just going to the house. I'll come back tonight, okay? Say around twelve?"

"No, no, no," Elijah says softly, his fingers insistent tendrils in Dom's hair. "Don't leave me. Sleep with me."

Dom's mouth opens with an audible kiss-click of his lips, but he doesn't have anything to say.

"Sleep with me," Elijah says again. He's already drawing Dom down; the only way Dom can keep his balance is to move back onto the bed and stretch out next to Elijah.

Dom, every inch of his skin feeling fragile with wonder, lets Elijah shift them both until Elijah's head is on Dom's shoulder, and Elijah's limbs are wound around Dom's body. This time, when Dom falls asleep, he goes deep enough to dream long elaborate fictions of dancing and playing dice and looking for Elijah's mask, but he dreams that he's in New Orleans, not journeying to or from it.

 

 

AU: Mardi Gras. Epilogue.

Orlando drags himself across the gutted bed, flat-handing his cell phone off the nightstand and curling it into the side of his neck. Its trill vibrates through his throat, making him swallow and wakening the dry rasp there. Orlando coughs, and fumbles his phone open.

"Yeah?" he croaks. He clears his throat and tries again. "Hello?"

"What the fuck were you drinking, Bloom?" Stuart laughs on the other end of the line. "And, will you send me a coupla bottles?"

Orlando crawls onto the pillows and sits up, pushing pointlessly at the tangle of his curls hanging into his face.

"What? Oh … _Christ_. Last night … how did you - ?"

"You're all over the fucking papers, boy. Or rather, your bare arse is."

"Bloody hell," Orlando says, and his mouth's stretching into a grin despite his best efforts to freak out.

"You still with her?"

Orlando cranes forward enough to see that the bathroom door is standing open and the light's off in there.

"No, looks like there's no one here but this idiot."

"The net coverage is even better. Ted Casablanca's threatening to fall on his sword; he was so sure you were gay. Guess you showed him, huh?"

There's a silence that Orlando's abruptly irritated by.

"Anyway - "

"Yeah, Stuart? There's something I should have said to you fucking years ago."

"Oh?" Stuart says, suddenly serious.

"Yeah. I think you're fucking gorgeous, man. Do you wanna, like, I dunno, take a holiday with me? Go to the islands, maybe? Surf, just fucking hang out, see what happens?"

There's another silence, but somehow this one doesn't bother Orlando. Somehow, Orlando feels he already knows what Stuart's going to say.

"Yeah," Stuart says at last. "Orli. I think I'd really like that."

"Good. Okay, look, I'm gonna ring off and call you back later, because right now I hafta fucking die."

Cut.

Viggo opens his eyes, groaning at the onrush of returning awareness. He's lying on the floor next to his cot bed, bits of Liv's chiffon frippery draped over his face. He bats at them, spitting bits of gold thread out of his mouth.

"Oh … someone peel my fuckin' skin off and lemme fuckin' _eat_ it," he rasps.

Cut.

Sometime around noon Dom rolls over, the top sheet dragging coolly at his naked skin. His eyelids flicker and he inhales deeply, drawing Elijah's warm scent into his lungs. Elijah grazes his fingers against Dom's bare chest.

"So your luck is broken," Elijah murmurs.

Dom shifts on the pillow.

"If this is broken, I hope it never gets fixed," he says.

Elijah smiles, blinking heavily.

"I want to make love again," he says, his voice thickening as he slides back into sleep. "In a while. We have time, right?"

"We have time," Dom mumbles in agreement, and their breaths are already falling into the same slow cadence as they sink into dreams again, their hands on each other's skin.

 

The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who left feedback and recc'ed this series. Hope you enjoy the ending.


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